Ag Policy Blog
Chris Clayton DTN Ag Policy Editor

Wednesday Nov 11, 2009
Climate Not Changing in Senate

Every day it seems a story comes across the news wire stating that the Senate is not going to pass a climate bill this year.

If I could repeat that, the Senate is not going to pass a climate bill in 2009, OK?

And yet, every day we get a story written as if this is beyond comprehension, only to have a quote from another senator restating the obvious.

"It's common understanding that climate-change legislation will not be brought up on the Senate floor and pass the Senate this year," Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D., Mont., told Dow Jones Newswires.

Baucus said he planned to hold a number of hearings on climate legislation and eventually mark up a bill in his panel. "But I don't know that I can get a bill put together by this year, as important as climate-change legislation is," he said.

Baucus and the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on jobs on Tuesday. A good summary and some comments can be found at www.farmpolicy.com

Yet, there are people still trying to push a late climate bill. They operate much like a coach on one of those 1-7 NFL teams trying to rally the team to keep playing. Or a fan of one of those teams who for some crazy reason keeps watching them. But I don't know anybody like that.

United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-moon, on Tuesday was the latest to ask the U.S. Senate to pass a climate bill before UN talks on climate in December.

"From what I heard today, there is great support in the Senate for action on climate change," Ban Ki-moon was quoted saying in Associated Press. "I would sincerely hope that the Senate would take necessary action as soon as possible."

His plea makes the second time in as many weeks a world leader has showed up at the Capitol asking for action. Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel made the same case last week.

While the House has passed a climate bill, it was by the thinnest of margins, one to be exact. It passed with 219 votes and needed 218. In an interview last week, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., author of the House climate bill agricultural amendment, dubbed, the Peterson amendment, told Environment & Energy Daily he would vote against a final bill, even though he voted for the House version.

Peterson told E&E "he considers his work on the bill done: He has no interest in working to advance climate legislation further," the article stated.

"Do I care? No," he said of the bill's passage.

Food Fight

The Guardian in England is looking this week at the "fight over the future of food" which examines the conflicts of demands for higher food production and need for a new "Green Revolution," in contrast to resistance in some countries to biotechnology. That includes growing resistance to technology in the United States as well.

http://www.mg.co.za/…

I can be found on Twitter at chrisclaytonDTN.

Posted at 07:01AM CST Nov 11, 2009 by Chris Clayton
Comments (2)
Chris: This is very informative material, especially the change of heart being displayed by Representative Peterson. Do you have any insight as to why Mr. Peterson has changed his view on this? His "Do I care? No" statement is particularly perplexing. Could it be that the House is losing interest in the whole concept of climate change and "cap and trade" in light of the continued weakness in the economy? Are they beginning to see how this system of cap and trade would negatively affect the overall economy, including agriculture? Thanks for the good information.
Posted by tom vogel at 07:56AM CST Nov 12, 2009
The climate change models are bunk. Climate change modeling started with the Club of Rome in their 1974 book promoting the running out of resources too many people thesis. Computer modeling is only as good as the underlying assumptions of the model. All models fail becauce their developers fall in love with their work and all the models are simplistic projections from past data used to predict into the future. Secondly, computer models lack a track record. How in the world can world governments fall for conclusions formed by unknown scientists breaking ground in a new field. Third, who elected this group of highly educated scientists to form a world government? They are accountable to whom? Einstein used theoritical mathamatics (whatever that is) not computers to discover laws of the universe. Of course he had a high IQ. Almost half of the USA citizens say the world is cooling. The other half say it is warming. Don't these nuts have enough to argue about with abortion and gay marriage? No now the nuts want to add a third issue, global (maybe) warming.
Posted by DAVE CAPEK at 02:51PM CST Nov 14, 2009
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