In this episode, I interview Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau, on the potential impact of climate change legislation on agriculture.

Use the audio player below to listen to the conversation and follow along with the show notes. I hope you find the podcast informative.

Show Notes:

00:17 Several hearings have been held this fall about the Kerry-Boxer climate bill that is under consideration in the U.S. Senate. The bill is more than 900 pages long, and one would think that it must cover virtually every issue in the climate debate. According to the American Farm Bureau (AFB), that's not the case.

00:55 The American Farm Bureau has been around for 90 years. Currently, there are 6.2 million member families--there are no individual members, only fam... more »

On Tuesday, yet another voice spoke out against the proposed climate legislation under consideration in Congress. This time it was Margo Thorning, senior vice president and chief economist at the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF), speaking before the Senate Finance Committee.

In her testimony, Thorning referenced the findings of a recent ACCF/National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) study that found the House's version of the climate bill would:

• Reduce total U.S. employment (net of new jobs created in green industries) by between 1,790,000 to 2,440,000 jobs in 2030. Manufacturing is hard hit, absorbing between 59 to 66 percent of job losses over the 2012-2030 period; and
• Lower GDP by up to 2.4 percent relative to the baseline forecast in 2030.

Additionally, Thorning speci... more »

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee today voted to send the Kerry-Boxer climate bill to the Senate floor without amendments. Only Democrats were in attendance for the vote, and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mt.) voted against the bill, saying he would withhold his support contingent on the adoption of some pro-agriculture amendments.

The Republican members of the committee have been boycotting the committee's hearings on the Kerry-Boxer bill, saying they wanted a full Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) analysis of the legislation rather than the regurgitated analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill that was provided to the committee. Today, committee chairwoman Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.)rebuffed their request, saying it would be duplicative and a "waste of taxpayer money" to prepare a n... more »

A recent poll shows that the more Americans learn about climate legislation, the less they like it. Especially when they realize that it will take money out of their pockets.

How much money? About $2,300 per year per average U.S. household, according to the American Farm Bureau. That's nearly $200 a month.

The Farm Bureau calculated this figure by adding the Energy Information Administration's (EIA) estimate of higher energy costs ($1,870 per year) under the Waxman-Markey bill with its own estimate of the legislation's impact on food prices. The total cost: up to $200 billion per year for U.S. consumers, which equates to a 15 percent hike in personal income taxes.

"Can you [imagine] how consumers in this country would scream if they knew they would be hit with a 15 percent hike in their pe... more »

The ongoing debate over the Kerry-Boxer climate bill has tended to focus primarily on two issues: the bill's potential costs and its proposed environmental benefits. But there are at least two other critically important items that have not been addressed adequately by the bill's sponsors. Both were mentioned briefly at yesterday's hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing.

The first involves government-mandated diesel emission reductions that began about seven years ago. The goal was to reduce emissions from heavy trucks to near-zero levels for both nitrogen oxide and particulate matter (soot). The American Trucking Associations (ATA) supports the air quality gains, but it notes that the environmental improvements haven't come cheap.

At yesterday's hearing, B... more »