Leadership on the Energy and Climate Policy Fronts
January 7th, 2010
South Carolina agricultural, forestry and conservation leaders in who gathered in Columbia this week should be commended for exploring how they might deliver much needed climate change and energy solutions. More than 100 producers, landowners, industry leaders, environmentalists, academics and state agency representatives came together to get factual information about energy and climate policy options; talk about alternatives and consequences; and explore emerging low carbon technologies can stimulate economic development.
Among the issues discussed was a study conducted by the University of Tennessee’s Bio-Based Energy Analysis Group, and released by 25x’25 that projects how meeting several proposed energy/climate change policy scenarios might impact the U.S. agricultural economy. The study, entitled Analysis of the Implications of Climate Change and Energy Legislation to the Agricultural Sector, shows that net returns for U.S. agriculture are positive under a properly constructed cap-and-trade program. The comprehensive assessment also found that income from offsets and from market revenues under a properly constructed cap-and-trade program is higher than any potential increase in input costs, including energy and fertilizer.
On the other hand, the study says that if carbon emissions are regulated by EPA as prescribed under a 2007 Supreme Court ruling, net farm income is projected to fall below USDA baseline projections over the next 15 years.
Sounding the alarm at the South Carolina conference over the prospects of top-down regulation of carbon emissions by EPA and the consequences to agriculture of that singular control was Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican. Graham renewed his call for a legislative remedy for climate change, despite criticism from some of the more conservative factions of his party.
Graham is to be commended for his efforts to move the nation away from its reliance on foreign oil and improving national security, and for a bipartisan legislative proposal that would create more demand for cleaner energy sources and a new energy economy. The leadership exhibited by Graham, and by South Carolina agricultural and forestry leaders who participated at this week’s conference, shows a willingness to challenge the status quo and exercise, in Graham’s words, “reason, logic . . . good business sense and good environmental policy.”
