The American Power Act Needs to Address Food and Farming!

The American Power Act, also known the Kerry-Lieberman "cap-and-trade" bill, takes steps to restrict some greenhouse gas emissions, but the bill subsidizes nuclear energy, preempts progressive state and municipal climate change policy and handcuffs the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
 

Conspicuously missing from the bill are any effective measures to reduce greenhouse gases in the food and farming sector, which is responsible for up to 30% of the world's climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases. The American Power Act could make a positive impact on climate change by:
 

-Supporting local food distribution. The average single food item travels over 1400 miles from farm to fork. Developing local food economies could greatly reduce the amount of greenhouse gases generated from from food transportation and refrigeration.
 

-Transition conventional farms to organic. OCA's ally, the Rodale Institute, has demonstrated that if the world’s 3.5 billion tillable acres were transitioned to organic agriculture, organic farms could sequester 40% of yearly carbon emissions.
 

-Prohibiting funds for industrial geoeneringeering. Geoengineering, according to the ETC Group, is the intentional, large-scale manipulation of the environment by humans to bring about environmental change, particularly to counteract the undesired side effects of other human activities. Technologies like biochar production, while promising for small-scale and community-based initiatives, are extremely hazardous at the industrial level.   

-Banning funds for industrial biofuels. Industrial biofuels, like corn-based ethanol, consume more energy in their production than they save by providing an alternative to fossil fuels. Additionally, most ethanol in the United States is produced from Genetically Engineered corn grown in monocultures on megafarms, which are hugely energy dependent.
 

-Dismantle factory farms or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). The livestock sector produces more emissions than transportation and, by some estimates, could be generating as much as 51% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Dismantling CAFOs, reducing meat consumption, and transitioning to "pasture-based" farming systems would significantly reduce greenhouse gases.   

 

Contact your Senators and urge them to place organic and sustainable food and farming front and center.