After severely weakening the House climate bill in the spring, Collin Peterson has now reversed his position:

“First of all, this isn’t going anyplace in the Senate,” Peterson told a conservative talk radio show based in North Dakota, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “But if it did and we ended up with a bill that was similar to what came out of the House and that was going to become law, I would vote no.”

Peterson, who prides himself on doing the bidding of industrial agriculture corporations, never intended to support climate legislation on final passage. He lended the measure his support in the House in order to weaken it as much as possible, only to turn around and oppose it when it counts.

Democrats should seriously consider taking his Chairmanship of the Agriculture Committee away, since he is not negotiating in good faith with leadership.

Reuters:

The largest U.S. farm group will oppose aggressively “misguided” climate legislation pending in Congress and fight animal rights activists, said American Farm Bureau Federation president Bob Stallman on Sunday. In a speech opening the four-day AFBF convention, Stallman said American farmers and ranchers “must aggressively respond to extremists” and “misguided, activist-driven regulation … The days of their elitist power grabs are over.”

Here is Stallman’s full speech:

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Back in reality, this post at the Wonk Room details some of the negative impacts climate change will likely have on agriculture.

Just as the Chamber of Commerce is not actually the voice of business, the American Farm Bureau is not the voice of agriculture. Here is their latest delusional and misleading statement:

“We applaud the decision by Senate leadership to delay consideration of climate change legislation until the spring of 2010. This move offers a great opportunity for lawmakers to go back to the drawing board and re-assess the need for this legislation and the impact it will have on all Americans.

“Legislation previously approved by the House, and a similar bill approved on a party-line vote by a Senate committee, would impose higher energy and food costs on consumers. The bills also would create an energy deficit due to limited alternatives. Farmers and ranchers would see higher fuel, fertilizer and energy costs. And the cap-and-trade provisions would do little more than downsize American agriculture and our ability to produce food in this nation. None of those are acceptable results to us, and we will continue to tell our members of Congress, ‘Don’t cap our future.’

“The timing for this announcement by Senate leaders could not be better. We now know there will be no international agreement resulting from the upcoming meeting in Copenhagen. Furthermore, we have heard testimony from the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency that the House-passed bill would have no significant impact on the global climate. These bills represent all pain and no gain for our nation and American agriculture and now the Senate has a chance to correct that error.”

Here is the relevant part of the transcript:

QUESTION: If we could turn to another one of those key questions: climate change. That’s obviously going to be a key issue in your talks with the Chinese. Just on the subject of climate change, could we ask you whether you are intending to go to Copenhagen for the talks? You went there for Chicago’s bid for the Olympics; are you intending to go there for the climate change summit?

OBAMA: Well, here’s what I’ll say. Since before I was sworn in, I was very clear that I think dealing with climate change is vital to our security interests, is vital to our economic interests. It is an opportunity, as well as an enormous challenge, for us to shift to a clean energy economy. And after eight years in which there was resistance to even acknowledging the problem, I think my administration has been very clear that we intend to be a leader on this issue internationally.

Now, getting to a deal internationally is difficult. This will be one of the top subjects for our conversations with the Chinese. In my previous conversations with President Hu Jintao, I think he acknowledges that this is an area of great interest to the Chinese. The effects of climate change could be devastating on their agricultural systems and their ecology. And the key now is for the United States and China as the two largest emitters in the world to be able to come up with a framework that along with other big emitters, like the Europeans and those countries that are projected to be large emitters in the future like India, can all buy into.

And I remain optimistic that between now and Copenhagen, that we can arrive at that framework. It’s hard work. And one of the things that I’ve come to believe based on a lot of summits this year is that the work is really not done at the summit; the work is done before the summit. And if I am confident that all the countries involved are bargaining in good faith and we are on the brink of a meaningful agreement and my presence in Copenhagen will make a difference in tipping us over the edge, then certainly that’s something that I would do. But I’ve got to make sure that over the next three weeks, pressure is continually applied on our teams and everybody else’s teams to actually create a framework that people can sign off on.

QUESTION: Do you think there’s more you can bring, apart from what’s happening on the Hill, sort of legislation which may not indeed be ready by then, but I mean –

OBAMA: Well, I think everybody understands that the Senate won’t have acted on climate change legislation before Copenhagen. And our key partners, including Prime Minister Rasmussen of Denmark, the host, who’s taken a very constructive and active role on this issue, I think recognizes that not every “t” is going to be crossed and “i” dotted in the next three weeks. I think the question is, we can create a set of principles, building blocks, that allow for ongoing and continuing progress on the issue, and that’s something I’m confident we can achieve.

And I am confident also — last point I’d make — I’m confident that the American people will recognize the enormous opportunity around a clean energy economy and the ability for us to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

But it takes time. In meetings with world leaders, I’ve repeatedly explained that America is not a speedboat; we’re a big ocean liner. And you can’t reverse course overnight. But what we can do and we are doing is I think changing the trajectory of how we approach this issue, both in terms of public opinion, attitudes on Capitol Hill, and certainly among businesses who really understand that for America to lead in this issue ultimately will create enormous economic opportunities.

Via Western Citizen, American Farmland Trust lays out what this legislation aims to do:

1) Ensure agriculture is not subject to an emissions cap;

2) Ensure USDA promulgates the rules and administers any agricultural offset program;

3) Create clear authority so projects partially-funded with government money are eligible for credits, and ensures stackable environmental credits from projects are recognized;

4) Create clearer mechanisms to recognize producers and systems already in place in voluntary carbon markets;

5) Clarify various technical requirements for carbon sequestration projects;

6) Create a comprehensive and well-funded government carbon conservation program for producers who are ineligible or unable to participate in a carbon offset market; and

7) Provide supplemental funding for various programs to jumpstart renewable energy projects.

Original cosponsors included Senators Baucus, Klobuchar, Brown, Harkin, and Begich.

Here is the text of the bill:

Here is a section-by-section summary:

Here is a one-pager:

Environmental Working Group:

Farm industry leaders and their supporters in Congress are trying to derail climate change legislation by insisting that the House-passed bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), will cause ruinous increases in the costs of production for farmers. They claim this threat is so potentially devastating that climate change legislation should be shelved or loaded up with concessions that send more money to their agricultural constituents.But a new analysis by the Environmental Working Group of US Department of Agriculture cost estimates finds that the projected increased costs of production due to the climate bill will be so small ⎯ $0.45 per acre for soybeans, $0.66 per acre for wheat, and $1.19 per acre for corn, for example ⎯ that they amount to well under one half of one percent of current production costs.

crying-wolf –

USA Today:

The nation is headed for strong heat waves in coming decades that will hit cities and farmers and threaten wildlife with extinction, a new global warming report warns.

The report, “More Extreme Heat Waves: Global Warming’s Wake Up Call,” sponsored by medical, environmental and civil rights organizations, comes as a legislative fight over a climate change bill gets ready to resume next month in Congress. Its remedies are based on recent findings of global warming effects by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which coordinates climate research across federal agencies.

More Extreme Heat Waves: Global Warming’s Wake Up Call –

NWF provided a video as well:

Dr. Amanda Staudt, National Wildlife Federation’s Climate Scientist previews her new report that connects the dots between Global Warming and extreme weather patterns.

Find more videos at EnviroKnow TV.

The abstract, from Climate of the Past:

The rapid expansion of the Inca from the Cuzco area of highland Peru (ca. AD 1400–1532) produced the largest empire in the New World. Although this meteoric growth may in part be due to the adoption of innovative societal strategies, supported by a large labour force and a standing army, we argue that it would not have been possible without increased crop productivity, which was linked to more favourable climatic conditions. Here we present a multi-proxy, high-resolution 1200-year lake sediment record from Marcacocha, located 12 km north of Ollantaytambo, in the heartland of the Inca Empire. This record reveals a period of sustained aridity that began from AD 880, followed by increased warming from AD 1100 that lasted beyond the arrival of the Spanish in AD 1532. These increasingly warmer conditions would have allowed the Inca and their immediate predecessors the opportunity to exploit higher altitudes (post-AD 1150) by constructing agricultural terraces that employed glacial-fed irrigation, in combination with deliberate agroforestry techniques. There may be some important lessons to be learnt today from these strategies for sustainable rural development in the Andes in the light of future climate uncertainty.

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From the Pacific Institute.

Sustaining California Agriculture in an Uncertain Future –