Dec
Food prices to rise (even more): Obama wants to turn farms into forests
Oh the unintended consequences…Just as when the price of corn and other agricultural products soared when the U.S. government pushed Ethanol on us, if Barack Obama gets his way you’ll be paying even more for your food.
The cap-and-trade bill offers initiatives for farmers and ranchers to do something that sounds oh so wonderful: turn farms into forests to save the world from the sure destruction of global warming. You see. forests trap CO2 and heat better than farms do. The Washington Times reports:
The latest Agriculture Department economic-impact study of the climate bill, which passed the House this summer, found that the legislation would profit farmers in the long term. But those profits would come mostly from higher crop prices as a result of the legislation’s incentives to plant more forests and thus reduce the amount of land devoted to food-producing agriculture.
According to the economic model used by the department and the Environmental Protection Agency, the legislation would give landowners incentives to convert up to 59 million acres of farmland into forests over the next 40 years. The reason: Trees clean the air of heat-trapping gases better than farming does.
Just why would a farmer want to plant trees instead of food?
The legislation would give free emissions credits, known as offsets, to farmers and landowners who plant forests and adopt low-carbon farm and ranching practices. Farmers and ranchers could sell the credits to help major emitters of greenhouse gases comply with the legislation. That revenue would help the farmers deal with an expected rise in fuel and fertilizer costs.
As Allison Specht, an economist at the American Farm Bureau Federation, summed it up: “That’s one of the realities of cap-and-trade legislation. The biggest bang for your buck for carbon credits is planting trees,”
We hope those are trees are tasty.
Full story: Washington Times
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Rather than planting trees on “agricultural land” why not on the hills and mountain slopes,vast areas available.
But that would not help the farmers pay for increased fuel prices
This is a Political business driven by the UN to generate BI$$IONS from ,ultimately,YOU,approved by the new socialist president.
Re Greenpeace ad. Give £3/month to save the polar bear.
Its going to cost us ,YOU and I ,90 times that/month possibly more.
How come Al Gore and Obama don’t mention the hundreds of millions (billions?) of trees cut down each year to celebrate Christmas? One would think they’d be pushing a “Kill a tree for Christ” program.
#1 those are tree farms idiot. They are generally small patches of land that people have and replant and chop every year. And most tree farms are also businesses that sell flowers and plants during the spring and summer. Jobs. Businesses. Revenue for the govt. MAKE UP YOUR MIND! #2. Christmas TREES have nothing to do with Christ.
Apparently Obama says, ‘Let them eat bark!’
The EU and GORDON BROWN have agreed that Palm-oil plantations can be regarded as RAIN-FOREST.
Hence Rain-forest can be cleared in Indonesia,to plant Palm -oil trees.
In doing this they ROB the planet of Orang-Utang habitat and KILL the all animals,flora and fauna.
Why BIO-DIESEL ,the Greenpeace and scientists answer to climate change,”SUSTAINABLE DESTRUCTION” through junk science
Save the PLANET………… DUMP CLIMATE SCIENCE