Thursday, February 8, 2007 - 8:55 AM

"US Climate Policy -- Is Agriculture a Player or By-Stander".

Sara Hessenflow Harper, Environmental Defense, 1875 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20009

In the past year, a number of new federal, state and regional policy proposals and laws have been put forward or enacted to address the climate change issue. Some of these proposals offer significant opportunity for agriculture to contribute to the solution – and generate new market revenue. Other proposals exclude, or greatly limit agriculture's ability to participate. From the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the Northeast that limits climate offsets to 3% of an entity's emissions to California's newly passed state law which does not explicitly allow or forbid offsets and trading, the current trend in climate policy has been to ignore what agriculture can do to mitigate climate change. This presentation examines the policy options currently proposed or passed and evaluates the opportunity available for agriculture in each, as well as providing an overview of what practices and products agriculture could deploy to reduce GHG emissions.