`Proposed Bill Gives U.S. Agricultural Sector Easier Access to Emissions Trading - Olive Oil Times
Enter keywords and hit Go →
enEnglish
enEnglishfrFrançaiselελληνικάdeDeutscheitItalianozh-CN中文ptPortuguêsesEspañoltrTürkçehrHrvatskija日本語hiहिंदी
enEnglish
enEnglishfrFrançaiselελληνικάdeDeutscheitItalianozh-CN中文ptPortuguêsesEspañoltrTürkçehrHrvatskija日本語hiहिंदी

Proposed Bill Gives U.S. Agricultural Sector Easier Access to Emissions Trading

By Lisa Anderson
Jun. 30, 2020 10:11 UTC
Summary Summary

The Growing Climate Solutions Act intro­duced in the U.S. Senate aims to pro­vide income for farm­ers and landown­ers by issu­ing car­bon cred­its, estab­lish­ing pro­to­cols for agri­cul­tural and forestry prac­tices that sequester car­bon diox­ide. The bill would also direct the U.S. Department of Agriculture to pro­vide tech­ni­cal exper­tise and access to car­bon trad­ing mar­kets, but crit­ics argue it favors larger agri­cul­tural busi­nesses and does not go far enough in reduc­ing green­house gas emis­sions.

A newly intro­duced bill to the floor of the United States Senate seeks to gen­er­ate addi­tional income for the country’s farm­ers, ranch­ers and landown­ers by issu­ing car­bon cred­its on a larger scale.

If passed, the Growing Climate Solutions Act would estab­lish pro­to­cols for mem­bers of the agri­cul­tural and forestry sec­tor to receive cred­its for prac­tices that sequester car­bon diox­ide from the atmos­phere, such as refor­esta­tion.

Additionally, the bill directs the U.S. Department of Agriculture to pro­vide tech­ni­cal exper­tise on these projects and facil­i­tate access to the car­bon trad­ing mar­kets for mem­bers of the sec­tor

The leg­is­la­tion is a rare bipar­ti­san effort to address one of the issues con­tribut­ing to cli­mate change, while pro­vid­ing a new source of rev­enue for farm­ers, ranch­ers and landown­ers, many of whom have been impacted by U.S. trade ten­sions and the Covid-19 pan­demic.

The intro­duc­tion of the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA), which was put in place to cut down on emis­sions from inter­na­tional flights, is pre­dicted to increase demand for car­bon cred­its when it comes into force in 2021.

The pro­posed bill has been wel­comed by a num­ber of orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Farmers Union, and large food­ser­vice com­pa­nies, such as McDonald’s.

However, many sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture orga­ni­za­tions have crit­i­cized the bill for favor­ing larger agri­cul­tural busi­nesses over smaller ones, as they are more likely to have the cap­i­tal and resources to invest in these projects.

Other detrac­tors of the leg­is­la­tion have said that the bill does not go far enough on cut­ting back on green­house gases and would essen­tially com­mod­ify pol­lu­tion.

More articles on:  , ,

Advertisement

Related Articles