Think Progress

by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ryan Powers, Nate Carlile, and Brad Johnson

CLIMATE

The Future For Farmers

Farmers and those in the agriculture economy have a lot to lose as greenhouse gases increasingly trap more heat at the planet's surface. More than any other sector of our economy, farmers are hit hard by the extreme weather exacerbated by global warming -- floods, droughts, heat waves, and storms threaten their livelihood and our food supply. At the same time, the one in 300 Americans employed in the $200 billion farming and forestry sector have tremendous opportunities in the shift to a clean energy economy. U.S. agricultural and forest lands sequester 903 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, absorbing 13 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, but U.S.agriculture also produces 413 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions per year. If industrial agriculture engages in greener practices, then advanced biofuels, wind farms, biological sequestration and other sustainable practices can offer new jobs and billions of dollars of income to rural America. However, as climate and clean energy legislation moves to the Senate, many of the members most skeptical of taking action to curb greenhouse gas emissions and build a green economy hail from predominantly rural states. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe (R) continues to claim that global warming is "phony." Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson (D) is "against" President Obama's climate agenda. And Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) has "a lot of concerns" with the American Clean Energy and Security Act passed last month by the House of Representatives.

BILLION-DOLLAR DISASTERS: The effects of global warming are already being felt by the nation's farmers, according to the U.S. Global Change Research Program. "The Midwest and northern Great Plains have experienced increases of more than 7ºF in average winter temperatures over the past 30 years," allowing "many insect pests and crop diseases to expand and thrive." "Precipitation has become less frequent but more intense," such as the spring 2008 flooding of the Mississippi River, which caused$8 billion in agricultural losses. "Three years ago in a drought that spanned more than a year, Texas lost $4.1 billion, a crop and livestock record for a single year," one of several billion-dollar droughts in the last 10 years. And the devastating droughts and heat waves continue, hitting our nation's top agricultural producers especially hard. Last month, "close to 4,000 head of cattle died in the extreme heat across 23 counties in central and eastern Nebraska." "Central and South Texas are in the midst of an epic drought that has sapped soils of their moisture, dried up stock ponds and turned cornfields from green to beige." California's "Central Valley farmers will receive an additional 100,000 acre-feet as part of a water loan to deal with the three-year drought plaguing the state" that "has turned fields into dust bowls and resulted in a spike in rural crime, high unemployment and low property values." Yet these disasters pale in comparison to projected trends if global warming pollution is not curbed. By the end of the century, the Southwest will be in permanent drought, the Great Plains will see average summer temperatures rise more than 10ºF, and heat waves in the Midwest will occur three times a year.

BIG AG'S DEMANDS: The House agriculture chair, Collin Peterson (D-MN), limited scientific oversight of agricultural offsets and included "a raft of provisions friendly to corn-based ethanol" in the clean energy act. The move blocked the EPA from calculating a biofuel's worldwide carbon footprint due to land use changes when determining its eligibility for federal subsidies. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), chairman of the Senate agriculture committee, told E&E News that "EPA's got to get over their absolute rejection of ethanol. They've just got to get over it. And we're going to force them to get over it." Harkin explained that he is "reasonably happy" with Peterson's work: "We want no indirect land use, things like that in there -- there is no scientific basis for that." In fact, the connection between biofuels and indirect land use change is real, and the scientific understanding is robust. "These amendments run the risk of creating a subprime market in both offsets and biofuels," David Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council testified before the Environment and Public Works Committee this week. "They seriously damage the environmental integrity of the bill, and they will undermine public confidence in the markets for both products." But other influential members of the Senate agricultural committee, including Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Kent Conrad (D-ND), strongly support the Peterson amendments. In fact, Conrad told E&E News he wants "more allocations or offsets" for the oil and coal industries in his state.

CLEAN OPPORTUNITY: Unfortunately, these senators seem to be looking to continue unsustainable business practices instead of reaching for opportunities for clean energy reform. As Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Jake Caldwell reports, the Department of Energy estimates that if only 5 percent of the nation's energy comes from wind power by 2020, rural America could see $60 billion in capital investment. Farmers and rural landowners would derive $1.2 billion in new income and see 80,000 new jobs created over the next two decades. And the Congressional Budget Office has suggested that with the appropriate incentives farms and forests could ultimately absorb 50 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Even though the Brookings Institution has found that the economic impact of a cap on carbon emissions to the agricultural sector is minimal, politicians continue to focus on the possible costs of change instead of the very real costs of inaction, promoting existing subsidies instead of spurring innovation through science-based standards. Although this approach serves the short-term interests of the industrial giants of the agricultural sector, it puts the security of America's food supply and the future of America's farmers at great risk.

CIVIL RIGHTS -- IRAQ WAR VET CONGRESSMAN PUSHES FOR REPEAL OF 'DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL': During an appearance yesterday at the National Press Club with gay, lesbian, and straight service members, Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA) called on his fellow members of Congress to support swift action on a repeal of the controversial 1993 Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) policy, which bans openly gay individuals from serving in the armed forces. "We can not afford to wait any longer," said Murphy during his press conference. "Now is the time to change this, when our military is stretched so thin." Since President Obama took office on Jan. 20, the Pentagon to discharged 287 members of the armed forces because of their sexual orientation, according to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. That number can be expected to rise because Congress is unlikely to move on a repeal of the law until "next year," according to Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), who spoke to House Democratic leaders about the issue last month. A recent Center for American Progress report by Lawrence Korb, Sean Duggan, and Laura Conley, outlined a five-step plan for ending DADT and recommended that Obama use his authority under the "stop loss" provision to halt the military from further discharging LGBT service members until the law can be changed legislatively. However, the Obama administration has repeatedly resisted pressure to use this authority. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has announced that the Defense Department plans to study more "humane" ways of enforcing the ban on openly gay soldiers.

"CIA Director Leon Panetta recently testified to Congress that the agency concealed information and misled lawmakers repeatedly since 2001, according to a letter from seven House Democrats to Panetta made public Wednesday." But the letter "contained no details about what information the CIA officials allegedly concealed, or how they purportedly misled members of Congress."  "President Obama threatened to veto the pending Intelligence Authorization Bill if it included a provision that would allow information about covert actions to be given to the entire House and Senate Intelligence Committees, rather than the so-called Gang of Eight." The White House claimed an expansion would undermine "a long tradition spanning decades of comity between the branches regarding intelligence matters." The state of Massachusetts sued the U.S government yesterday over the federal Defense of Marriage Act, a law that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman, arguing that it "interferes with the right of Massachusetts to define and regulate marriage as it sees fit." Massachusetts was the first state to legalize marriage equality. As the G8 met yesterday, the "world's biggest developing nations, led by China and India" refused at a separate meeting to "commit to specific goals for slashing heat-trapping gases by 2050." Instead, negotiators "embraced a goal of preventing temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, and developing nations agreed to make 'meaningful' if unspecified reductions in emissions." Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and an occasional economic adviser to President Obama, said he thinks a second stimulus may be necessary. "I think that a second one may well be called for," he told ABC's Good Morning America today. But, he added, "you hope it doesn't get watered down in many ways." Although two-thirds of country "lives in large metropolitan areas, home to the nation's worst traffic jams and some of its oldest roads and bridges," these cities and their surrounding regions are "getting less than half the money from the biggest pot of transportation stimulus money." Urban advocates worry that the disparities could "hurt the nation's economic engines." Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) "knew more than a year ago" that Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) was "having an affair with a staffer -- and he reportedly urged Ensign to end the relationship and pay a substantial sum of money to the staffer and her husband." When asked about the allegation, "Coburn's office confirmed that the he knew about Ensign's affair and had urged him to end it." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is "looking to force a vote as early as this week on the stalled nomination of Robert Groves to lead the Census Bureau," despite the fact that Sens. Richard Shelby (R-AL) and David Vitter (R-LA) continue to have holds on his nomination. President Obama has selected Dr. Francis Collins, a scientist who led the Human Genome Project, to be the next director of the National Institutes of Health. He has been a champion of "personalized medicine," which hopes to harvest the fruits of the genomics revolution in the form of better and safer clinical care. And finally: The Daily Show's John Oliver excoriated the media at yesterday's Campus Progress National Conference. When some students insisted that the Daily Show was more valuable than cable news, Oliver replied that the statement was "not a compliment to us, it's a well-aimed insult to them." He subtly dinged MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and CNN's Wolf Blitzer, and said that Fox News's Glenn Beck and right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh were "almost a joke within themselves...beneath contempt."

The power of a progressive block in Congress.

President Obama is improving America's image around the world.

A peek into the Echo Chamber of Horrors.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) believes that recognizing that slave labor built the Capitol conflicts with the nation's "Judeo-Christian heritage."

How are drones finding their targets in Pakistan?

Congressional Republicans refuse to let facts get in the way of a good lie.  

Sarah Palin: My whining is different than Hillary Clinton's.  

Elections in Iraq probably had little effect on the elections in Iran.

"Another story of universal health care gone awry. ... [A] 55-year-old man in the U.K., he ran into trouble when he couldn't find a dentist OKed by the government. So he superglued his tooth together for a period of three years."
-- Fox News' Sean Hannity, 7/08/09

VERSUS

"'It's one of my front teeth, I had just been supergluing it in,' said September Williamson of Grand Junction, Colo. The mortgage is due, the kids have needs, and the dental insurance doesn't cover a ninth of the cost of your dental work. At that point, applying superglue to your crowns didn't seem too unreasonable for Williams."
-- ABC News, 3/12/09