Washington Insider--Friday

By DTN's Washington Insider

Here's a quick monitor of Washington farm and trade policy issues from DTN's well-placed observer.

White House Report Warns of Future Costs as a Result of Climate Change

Increasingly severe weather events, thought to be the result of a changing global climate, are costing the U.S. economy between $18 billion and $33 billion a year, and climate change will only make it worse, a White House review on energy infrastructure concludes. The report recommends investments in the electric grid to protect it from the severe storms that may be occurring more frequently because of global warming, as well as from physical and cyber-attacks.

The review recommends spending about $15.2 billion over a decade to improve the grid, upgrade the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and make energy infrastructure more resilient to the effects of climate change. Some of that money is in the proposed 2016 federal budget.

The report notes that severe weather resulted in about 680 widespread power outages from 2003 to 2013 resulting in a cost to the U.S. economy of as much as $33 billion annually. And the risks are growing. Sea-level rise caused by climate change worsens storm surge and the severity of downpours, intensifying coastal flooding. Warming temperatures are thawing large swaths of permafrost in the far North, with significant consequences for pipelines, roads and other energy-linked infrastructure, the report concludes.

The cost to develop, maintain and repair the nation's energy infrastructure appears to be a bargain when compared with the potential cost to the economy of not doing so. But with so many in Congress focused on nothing much beyond their next run for re-election, it remains difficult to find the kinds of long-term funding that will be needed to keep the country competitive.

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Senate Panel Approves Secret Science Reform Act to Better Control EPA's Regulatory Process

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee this week approved legislation requiring a host of Environmental Protection Agency actions to be based on data that are public and available for independent analysis. The vote was 11 to nine, strictly along party lines, with the majority Republicans prevailing. The House passed a nearly identical version in March.

Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso, who sponsored the bill, said it would enhance the EPA's regulatory process while not imposing any new burdens on the agency or applying retroactively to past agency actions. Democrats, however, warned that the measure would cost the EPA hundreds of millions of dollars to implement and said it would hamstring EPA from finalizing human health and environmental protections.

Barrasso's bill would prevent the EPA from finalizing any risk, exposure or hazard assessment; criteria document; standard; limitation; regulation; regulatory impact analysis; or guidance document unless the data used as the basis for the action are publicly available and able to be independently analyzed.

President Obama has threatened to veto the legislation if it reaches his desk, meaning that the entire exercise is unlikely to produce anything other than a political statement that Republicans don't think much of EPA.

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Washington Insider: USDA's Nebraska Lab Kerfuffle

As expected, USDA recently completed internal and external reviews of its Nebraska Research Facility and turned up no evidence of animal mistreatment. However, the agency also says it won't start new research there until it adopts stronger accountability procedures. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that "it is important to note that the independent review did not find mistreatment of animals."

He chose to emphasize that the center's mission is to increase livestock production to meet demand growth expected by 2050, when the world's population is forecast to reach 9 billion people, but did not build on that by providing details about any particular research effort. And, the secretary said that the 50-year-old USDA unit aids the livestock and meat industry by developing livestock that are more hardy, productive and profitable.

While the report does not confront directly the extravagant claims about animal mistreatment made in an earlier New York Times story, Vilsack did establish the Agricultural Research Service's first-ever animal welfare ombudsman. The Times rushed to take credit for the story, the policy changes and, especially, for the fact that several members of Congress from both parties quickly pushed legislation to impose tougher rules.

The Times subsequently reported on the USDA report, and finds it to be weak. The newspaper concludes that USDA does not directly address the nature of the experiments at the center, including continuing trials to create "easy care" sheep programs where ewes give birth in open fields, where newborns sometimes die of starvation or predation. And, says the Times, USDA also did not review the high death rates in several experiments. Nor did it examine past practices at the center, where records show that hundreds of animals have died of what it called preventable causes.

Wayne Pacelle, head of the Humane Society of the United States, said the agency's inquiry was disappointing because it did not include "a forensic look into how appalling abuses were allowed to occur at the center and others like it, and whether the leadership and the researchers who abused animals there should be retained."

Well, not many are surprised that the USDA report did not did not satisfy Pacelle, who is not a fan of the commercial livestock industries in any sense and probably would not be satisfied unless all production animals were treated as pets. So, it seems that what we have now is a "failure to communicate," regarding the matter of research support for the livestock industry.

Livestock producers often regard production animals as partners in commercial operations with strategies that often include stress on both the operation and its components, observers note. The people and the livestock often face hammering by drought, cold, ice and snow, predators and other misfortunes. USDA admits its projects are designed to help producers succeed economically in a tough climate. Many from the animal rights community do not support such commercial activities at all and regard almost any form of pressure or stress as cruelty.

There is no excuse for brutality, of course, but attempting to survive in real High Plains conditions might appear to reflect more the vicissitudes of real life than to imply cruelty. Pacelle and the New York Times may think these cattle and sheep should be treated guests rather than economic units, but that probably will not help the livestock much when the snow and wind — and, wolves — appear.

Secretary Vilsack seems a little stunned by all this, and has shown little appetite to fight for his livestock industry against the urbanites.

So, this probably is not a fight USDA can win, at least not with the current leadership. It might be better to transfer the whole research operation to the U of Nebraska, or Cargill or some group who has the advantage of working in home conditions and knows what it takes to survive on the open range.

USDA may know –– but probably can no longer define –– an effective livestock research program that any producer can afford if Mr. Pacelle has anything to say about it, Washington Insider believes.

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(GH/CZ)

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