For me personally, this may be a time to
reassess what I’m about. I want to start with a question, “Where the heck are we
with respect to slowing or even reversing the levels of greenhouse
gases?” If I look at any of the many graphs published online, I see that
things are not looking good. For example, here’s a graph of global carbon emissions up to 2014:
To appreciate the significance of this graph,
you’ve got to realize that it is showing us how much new carbon dioxide
and other greenhouse gases are being added to the atmosphere. Every year
we add more, and the planet becomes still warmer. We’re told that that the advanced economies
are polluting less, slowing down just a bit, as the graph below shows,
but still at suicidal rates:
The advanced economies (black) are showing a
slower rate of emissions; still pumping out lots of carbon emissions, but not
so rapidly. At the same time, the rest of the world (green) is adding
carbon dioxide at a higher rate than ever.
As to where we are on slowing greenhouse gas emissions--we’re in a bad
place. If we don’t improve substantially from the status quo over the
next couple of decades, harmful changes in the global climate will occur at an
accelerating pace.
Awareness of climate change has grown in the
general population, but we are nowhere near a level of concern that would
provide the impetus for major economic and social moves starting right
now. Simply put, we humans have got to up our game. In the U.S.,It’s time
to shift the conversation from talking about lifestyle changes that smack of
“green”: veggie burgers, fewer airline trips, electric cars, conferences that
don’t seem to progress beyond channeling the mantras of ecological good works
and the like. Lifestyle changes are good, we’ll be better off and healthier for
adopting them, but as Michael Mann, a prominent climatologist recently wrote in Time Magazine:
“[F]ocusing on individual choices around
air travel and beef consumption heightens the risk of losing sight of the
gorilla in the room: civilization’s reliance on fossil fuels for energy and
transport overall, which accounts for roughly two-thirds of global carbon
emissions. We need systemic changes that will reduce everyone’s carbon
footprint, whether or not they care. The good news is we have tactics to bring
environmentally friendly (and non-lifestyle-disrupting) options to fruition:
pricing carbon emissions and creating incentives for renewable energy and
reduced consumption.”
Mann identifies two major initiatives that could
lead to significant reductions in the emissions we see graphed above, but
they’re not the only ones. I keep fairly close track of the literature on
climate change; everything from the science involved to the politics and
economics. It’s a veritable blizzard of
stuff! I have good friends working on initiatives different from those
that preoccupy me, and I feel guilty that I don’t know more about those areas,
or that I’m not making contributions
there. I’ve come to realize, though, that if I’m going to be effective I must
look for just one or two areas in which to concentrate my attention and
advocacy. That won’t mean ignoring all the others; I do need to stay in
community with many others whose goals with respect to combating climate change
I share.
So I’m going to try to focus in the near term on land conservation, agriculture, and food. I acknowledge that isn’t really a sharp focus. Whole areas within those topics could call for intense inquiry, but anything I look at will be of sufficient breadth and depth to bear significantly on greenhouse gas emissions; for me that’s the coin of the realm.
So I’m going to try to focus in the near term on land conservation, agriculture, and food. I acknowledge that isn’t really a sharp focus. Whole areas within those topics could call for intense inquiry, but anything I look at will be of sufficient breadth and depth to bear significantly on greenhouse gas emissions; for me that’s the coin of the realm.
So let’s dive into this complex, hugely
important subject with a report published in December, 2019, by Politico, of a
closed-door, highly selective meeting of the big wheels of American
agriculture. Hosted by the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance, about 100
attendees, including the current and past Secretaries of Agriculture, the
American Farm Bureau Federation, CEOs of major food companies, representatives
of green groups and anti-hunger advocates--a truly broad array of interests.
The Politico article reported that the topics covered included many that would
not have been on the table a couple of years ago. Climate change has been
a politically fraught topic in farm country, which tends to be strongly
Republican. The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication reported in a survey conducted in November 2019 that although 73% of registered voters think that global
warming is happening, only 41% of conservative Republicans agree. But for the
Politico meeting, though heavily Republican and rural, climate change was in
the room.
I’ve not been able to locate recent survey data
on how farmers today view climate change. A 2013 survey showed
that at that time, farmers were strongly inclined to think of dramatic changes
they’d recently experienced in the fields as a manifestation of just variable
weather. It’s a safe bet that fewer farmers today accept that view. Though they
don’t seem all that ready to accept the scientific consensus on climate change,
they’re reluctantly coming to recognize that large and persistent change
is in progress. Recent insights into the views of rural America on the
environment and conservation come from the Nicholas Institute
of Duke University: “Broadly, our study
suggests that the urban/rural divide on the environment is not a function of
how much rural voters care about the environment. Nor is it a function of how
knowledgeable they are—rural voters appear relatively sophisticated about
environmental issues.”
Then what are the important factors at
work? Interviews and surveys reveal that a key factor for those living in
rural settings is their strong feeling of place. Where they live is an
important part of how they define themselves, which in turn shapes their views.
They’re rural, country--definitely not into an urban perspective. They don’t
trust the federal government, even though it currently spends more than $20
billion a year on agricultural subsidies. At first this seems surprising, but
consider this: about 39 percent of the nation's 2.1 million farms receive
subsidies, with the lion's share going to the largest producers of corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice. Estimates
vary, but it appears that more than 60 percent of farmers are not directly
benefiting from subsidies.
The story of how subsidies originated, and the
rationales for them can be traced to the historical fact that as the nation
expanded westward in the 19th century, agriculture was the major driver.
Through the Morrill Act of 1869, the Federal government took an active role.
Agriculture was the dominant industry in
the expanding nation, but people needed help in learning how to farm and
build farm-based communities. Decades later, during the years of the
Great Depression, the government enacted many programs that would sustain farm
owners through complex, far-reaching legislation covering commodity price
supports, supply regulations, import barriers, and crop insurance. Those
programs have been expanded, modified, and expanded over the decades, even as
agriculture has metamorphosed from small farm operations into ever-larger
businesses and corporate operations. The result is that the huge amounts
currently spent on agricultural subsidies have had distorting effects, and are
a poor use of public funds. But proposals to shift from practices
supported by subsidies to more environmentally friendly, less polluting,
alternatives are seen by powerful interests as an assault on a time-honored way
of life, an economic threat.
So what is the justification for farm
subsidies as they are today? I’ve drawn some figures from the Cato
Institute blog, Downsizing the Federal Government. We’re going to get into a lot of numbers here, but bear
with me. Subsidies go mainly to high-earning households. The average income of
all farm households was about $118,000 in 2016, 42 percent higher than
the $83,000 average of all U.S. households. In that same year, the median
income of farm households was around $76,000, 29 percent higher than the U.S.
median of about $59,000. It is sometimes claimed that farm subsidies help to
alleviate rural poverty, but that’s obviously not the target of most of
the billions expended annually.
Just 2 percent of farm households fall below the poverty line, compared
to 14 percent of all U.S. households.
USDA data show that while less than one-third of farms with revenues of
less than $100,000 received federal subsidies, three-quarters of farms above
that threshold did. I’m not a fan of the philosophy that informs the
libertarian Cato Institute, but Chris Edwards’s blog seems to be well
researched, with solid referencing. It has me convinced that the Federal
Government’s agricultural policies as they apply to subsidies are misguided.
The 2018 article in Forbes on agricultural millionaires, courtesy of the federal government, makes me grind my
teeth.
Most farm subsidies are wasteful of money and
they’re largely bad for the environment. Climate change is producing ever more
unpredictable weather phenomena, from flooding to drought. We’ve got to move
away from past practices toward conservation, regeneration of the soil,
massive reductions in use of nitrogen fertilizer, and much more. The needed
changes are slow in coming, in part because farmers can’t accept that widely
accepted growing practices could be producing all the alleged environmental
destruction, and in part out of a sense of being blamed unfairly. But the
average farmer could, I believe, come to understand that federal programs
designed to promote regenerative agricultural practices and the like would be
to their advantage. Our problem is to somehow force the millionaire
beneficiaries to let go of cushy
subsidies designed to make wealthy interests even richer.
Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa is
reported by the Des Moines Register as
having received more than $367,000 in disaster, corn, oat and soybean commodity
subsidies over a recent 21 year period. Grassley is one of six House and Senate
leaders that sit on committees that draft the farm bill that renews every five
years. Grassley’s take is not a lot in comparison with the $5.3 million haul
taken in by California Representative Doug LaMalfa and his family. I do
wonder just what public good is served by paying subsidies to public servants
who are already well paid, comparatively wealthy, and stand to eventually
collect nice pensions from the federal government. Grassley and LaMalfa, who have been farming
(though not active farmers, obviously) most of their work lives, did nothing
illegal; they just followed the rules.
And who made the rules? There is a moral conflict of interest here
that cannot be papered over by saying only that the laws are being strictly
obeyed. To Grassley’s credit, he’s been espousing farm subsidy reforms that
would cut into the profiteering of large corporations and wealthy absentee
landlords who take in billions in federal money. The fact remains that substantial reductions
in farm subsidies will be an important step toward reducing greenhouse gas
emissions.
One final point: That green area in the
figure above, the emissions from developing and underdeveloped nations, is
growing in part because of misdirected subsidies paid out to underdeveloped
nations by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, as I discussed in my
previous blog of December 25. Please read it if you haven’t done so. We
have work to do on both the domestic and global fronts.
