Speaking before a gathering of coal-powered executives, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO) announced Tuesday that he, Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN), and Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO) were introducing yet another piece of legislation to roll back Clean Air Act action on global warming pollution. Skelton’s Dirty Air Act comes on the heels of similar legislation by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Rep. Jerry Moran (R-KS), and Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-ND). At the Missouri Rural Electric Cooperative State Legislative Conference, Skelton argued that because Congressional action on climate has “stalled” in the Senate, he “cannot tolerate turning over the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions to unelected bureaucrats” at the Environmental Protection Agency:

Simply put, we cannot tolerate turning over the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions to unelected bureaucrats at EPA. America’s energy and environmental policies should be set by Congress. It appears the clean energy bill moving through Congress is stalled. Let us set that bill aside and pass this scaled-back energy legislation. This bill, which represents a responsible way to move forward on energy legislation, gets the EPA under control, provides good things for American farmers, and builds upon bipartisan objectives that will help curb climate change and make our nation more energy independent.

The attacks on “unelected bureaucrats” are nonsense — the mandate to declare global warming emissions air pollutants came from the U.S. Supreme Court, the finding that global warming threatens the health and welfare of Americans came from independent scientists, and the plans for action have been approved by the Senate-confirmed EPA administrator Lisa Jackson and the duly-elected President of the United States, Barack Obama.

Critically, Skelton’s legislation would forbid defining any greenhouse gas as an “air pollutant” on the “basis of its effect on global climate change,” and prevent the consideration of the effect of ethanol production on land use.

Just as the coal industry has been warring against the science of global warming, the corn ethanol industry has been attacking the science of indirect land use change, which finds that a massive increase in biofuel production can cause farmers around the world to change how they plant crops and encourages the destruction of forests — leading to increased global warming pollution. These secondary effects can lessen or swamp out the global warming benefits of switching from fossil fuels to biofuels. Climate denier Peterson, who inserted pro-ethanol language in the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act for the agriculture industry last year in exchange for his vote, has announced he won’t support climate legislation again if it came up for a new vote. Amidst this political morass, the EPA this week incorporated land use effects into its biofuels mandate.

Skelton’s crusade against reality is putting his constituents at deadly risk. Skelton is ignoring the recent series of deadly floods, catastrophic ice storms, killer tornadoes, dangerous heat waves, and drought that have harmed the fourth congressional district of Missouri — all of which will worsen if global warming isn’t held back.

The rural electric cooperatives, though nominally publicly owned, are part of a nationwide network of climate-denying coal-powered companies, who are fighting climate legislation, even though it would lower their customers’ bills and stabilize energy prices. The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association is a top donor to Skelton, giving him $57,100. Peterson’s top donors include coal-powered American Crystal Sugar, at $84,585 among the $1,745,973 Peterson has received from agribusiness.

Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN) has wielded his power as the chair of the House Agriculture Committee to shape clean energy legislation on behalf of industrial agriculture interests. Peterson’s efforts to limit environmental regulation of industrial farmers in the American Clean Energy and Security Act may have been motivated by the hundreds of thousands of dollars he has received from agribusiness. Yesterday, Peterson appeared at a town hall meeting in Colorado with Rep. Betsy Markey (D-CO), and explained that his actions are also shaped by anti-science ideology:

Many of my people think global warming is a hoax, and I’m a little skeptical myself. But it’s going on all over the world, and it’s not good to put all that carbon in the atmosphere.

After winning concessions so that “the EPA will not run the program for agriculture, the department of agriculture will,” Peterson voted in favor of the ACES Act, which creates a carbon market but limits traditional Clean Air Act regulation of global warming pollutants. Peterson told the town hall audience that if the legislation isn’t passed and EPA regulates carbon pollution on its own, “you’ll have to get a catalytic converter for all your cows.”

Extremist climate denier Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) is responsible for the bizarre canard that regulation of global warming pollution requires bovine catalytic converters. Sensenbrenner has been making this absurd claim since 2007, and this June embarrassed Fox News interviewer Megyn Kelly in June with a rant about “cow farts” and “a catalytic converter on each end of the cow.”

In reality, traditional regulation of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases — including performance standards and construction permitting — would powerfully complement a carbon cap-and-trade system to build a clean-energy economy. As the USDA has found, the economic opportunity for farmers and ranchers far outweighs any costs of compliance. In a side note, catalytic converters actually generate carbon dioxide by breaking down carbon monoxide. So the doomsday Peterson and Sensenbrenner imagine is not only a fantasyland cartoon, it doesn’t even make sense.

According to disclosures released earlier this month, oil and natural gas interests are pumping money into lobbying firms to influence climate change legislation at a furious pace. With $82.2 million spent in just the first half of 2009 — compared to $132.2 million in all of 2008 — the industry is on track to set new records.

Unfortunately, as large as this direct lobbying figure is, it represents probably a fraction of the total amount of money the oil and gas industry is pouring into the debate. Some of the money flows straight to candidates and to political action committees. Another huge, largely undisclosed portion goes to what is known as “outside lobbying” efforts — public relations and advertising firms which coordinate a pro-polluter propaganda campaign to influence public opinion. And finally much of the money goes to financing “think-tanks” to produce reports outside the realm of scientific consensus to legitimize skepticism of global warming.

The outside lobbying campaign the industry has embraced this year is the most corrosive because it is based upon deception — and increasingly, hate. Koch Industries, the oil and gas behemoth, bankrolls the astroturf groups Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks. These groups were instrumental in orchestrating the anti-Obama tea party protests, where thousands gathered to display racist signs directed at the President, absurd calls for an impeachment, and more recently, protesters hanging Democratic leaders in effigy. In addition to the anti-Obama protests, these groups provide a useful front for industries as they hire dozens of field staff to spread misinformation about clean energy and bus people around the country to create the guise of public distrust of global warming. Koch has funneled its money not only to these astroturf efforts, but has been a prolific leader in all the aforementioned strategies that industries pursue (Charles Koch even founded the Cato Institute, a leader of global warming skepticism and has spent nearly $4 million in lobbying this year alone).

Although Koch has traditionally given mostly to Republicans, E&E notes that it is giving increasingly to Democrats. In 2009, Koch gave about 28 percent of its contributions to Democrats, compared to about 15 percent last year:

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT): $5,000 [FEC, accessed 7/29/09]
Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR): $10,000 [FEC, accessed 7/29/09]
Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR): $2,000 [FEC, accessed 7/29/09]

Rep. Marion Berry (D-AR): $2,500 [FEC, accessed 7/29/09]
Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK): $3,000 [FEC, accessed 7/29/09]
Rep. Allen Boyd (D-FL): $6,500 [FEC, accessed 7/29/09]
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX): $3,500 [FEC, accessed 7/29/09]
Rep. Charles Gonzalez (D-TX): $4,500 [FEC, accessed 7/29/09]
Rep. Gene Green (D-TX): $3,500 [FEC, accessed 7/29/09]
Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-LA): $2,500 [FEC, accessed 7/29/09]
Rep. Solomon Ortiz (D-TX): $1,000 [FEC, accessed 7/29/09]
Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN): $6,500 [FEC, accessed 7/29/09]
Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR): $2,000 [FEC, accessed 7/29/09]
Rep. David Scott (D-GA): $1,000 [FEC, accessed 7/29/09]
Rep. Henry Teague (D-NM): $1,000 [FEC, accessed 7/29/09]

In accepting dirty energy Koch money, these lawmakers are legitimizing the financiers of the anti-Obama tea party effort.

House Agriculture Committee chair Collin Peterson (D-MN), who has been blocking the passage of comprehensive climate legislation, dismissed a White House report on the damaging effect of global warming on U.S. agriculture. Dr. Jane Lubchenco, the chief of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association and one of the top scientists in the Obama administration, called the climate impacts report released yesterday a “clarion call for action” for a problem that “is happening now, and in our own backyards.” However, the Wall Street Journal reports that Peterson, “when asked by reporters Tuesday about the report’s findings, said they run counter to what many in his region are experiencing“:

We’ve just had the biggest floods and coldest winters we’ve ever had. They’re saying to us [that climate change is] going to be a big problem because it’s going to be warmer than it usually is; my farmers are going to say that’s a good thing since they’ll be able to grow more corn.

It is not apparent what farmers Peterson is talking about. As the report explains in its section on the agricultural impacts of climate change, global warming brings not only warmer temperatures but also heavier floods. Despite the relatively cold winter of 2008, over the past thirty years winter temperatures in Peterson’s Minnesota have risen more than 7°F. In fact, floods and higher temperatures associated with global warming have already damaged America’s corn crops, with worse to come:

Analysis of crop responses suggests that even moderate increases in temperature will decrease yields of corn, wheat, sorghum, bean, rice, cotton, and peanut crops.

Responding to Peterson’s argument on a telephone briefing organized by the Center for American Progress, USDA Global Change Program director Bill Hohenstein explained that scientists have estimated that “the effects on the corn yield in the Midwest” from observed changes in temperature and carbon dioxide levels “are a decrease of about 3 percent, not accounting for changes in water availability.” Hohenstein was citing an earlier U.S. Global Change Program report, The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity in the United States:

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In an agricultural hearing Thursday, committee chair Collin Peterson (D-MN) offered a withering critique of the comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation under consideration by the House of Representatives. Peterson, a conservative Blue Dog Democrat, attacked the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) for including both clean energy and global warming pollution standards:

My big problem is that they are mixing climate change together with energy independence. I don’t think that is smart.

In fact, it is Peterson, like other skeptics of action on climate change, who is not being “smart.” Reforming our broken energy policy requires recognition that the entire lifecycle of energy use matters. As Vice President Al Gore has explained, our energy and climate crises are “linked by a common thread – our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels.”

Closely aligned with the interests of his corporate agriculture contributors, Peterson is attempting to subvert Waxman-Markey, to replace our policy of fossil fuel subsidies without regulation with one of agriculture subsidies without regulation.

Like other attempts to outlaw science, Peterson wants to forbid the federal government from even recognizing agricultural pollution. By replacing petroleum, biofuels have the potential to dramatically reduce global warming pollution. But scientists have found biofuels can also worsen global warming by encouraging farmers to cut down the diversity-rich tropical forests that soak up carbon dioxide. Similarly, farmers may be able to trap more carbon in soil and plants through changes in agricultural practices, allowing them to sell billions of dollars of “offsets” in a carbon cap-and-trade market. But poorly regulated offsets are little more than worthless subsidies.

Following the law, the Environmental Protection Agency is taking steps to consider the global warming consequences of biofuel production as it develops new renewable fuels standards. Similarly, Waxman-Markey would put the EPA Administrator and an independent scientific board in charge of devising the rules for agricultural offsets to maintain their integrity. Peterson’s response? Forbid the government from using science to guide its green-farm policy:

A lot of us on the Committee do not want the EPA near our farms. And, I don’t think you are going to get any type of a bill through Congress, whatever the administration wants, that is going to have that system, for whatever it is worth.

At Grist, Tom Philpott debunks Peterson’s apologia for Big Ag:

The current version of Waxman-Markey contains almost no language on agriculture. (As I’ve written before, agriculture is exempt from any cap on greenhouse-gas emissions.) But farming projects would still be eligible for offsets through an offsets-review board that the legislation would set up within the EPA. Big Ag isn’t content with that arrangement. In the coming days, the game will be to insert specific language around ag offsets into the legislation –and promote a certification process developed by Big Ag itself.

In short, Peterson is playing a high-stakes game of chicken with our planet and farmers’s own livelihoods in order to force Congressional leadership to allow agricultural giants like Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland to rewrite this critical climate and clean energy legislation to their benefit. For weeks, Peterson has threatened to block Waxman-Markey if his demands on behalf of industrial agriculture are not met. And right now it looks like he’s going to win.

Our guest blogger is Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

A yield loss of three percent of the U.S. corn crop due to a rise in temperature of 2 degrees F totals $1.4 billion. Environment America, April 2009.

Farm-belt lawmakers are posing a challenge to passage of clean-energy legislation in Congress, but torpedoing the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) would hurt farmers because harms linked to global warming — including drought, flooding, and other crop damage — would continue unabated. House Agriculture Committee Chair Collin Peterson (D-MN) has threatened to bring down the entire green economy legislation if he doesn’t get his way on the renewable fuel standards and jurisdiction in the agriculture committee:

If they don’t want to change it, they’ll have to find the votes some other place. In my district a “no” vote would be a good vote.

Without congressional action on climate change legislation, global greenhouse gas emissions would continue to rise and the impacts on agriculture would grow. The link between global warming and extreme weather events is evident, and research predicts that the trend will intensify in coming decades:

Heatwaves, Extreme Storms, And Droughts Will Increase In Frequency And Intensity. Changes in extreme weather are “among the most serious challenges to society in coping with a changing climate,” a 2008 federal report indicated. In the future, the report predicts, “With continued global warming, heat waves and heavy downpours are very likely to further increase in frequency and intensity. Substantial areas of North America are likely to have more frequent droughts of greater severity.” [U.S. Climate Change Science Program, 2008]

Climate Disasters Have Increased Sixfold Since The 1950s. An insurance company database showed that weather-related disasters have increased sixfold since the 1950s, compared to only a slight increase in non-weather disasters. At a meeting of climate and insurance experts in 2006, “delegates reached a cautious consensus: Climate change is helping to drive the upward trend in catastrophes.” A Government Accountability Office investigation in 2007 found that private and government insurers including the federal crop and flood insurance programs paid out more than $320 billion for weather-related losses between 1980 and 2005. [Nature, 6/2006; GAO, 5/3/2007]

The 1988 And 1993 Midwest Climate Disasters Caused $79 Billion In Damages Alone. Not only are the costs of climate disasters high, they come in the form of unpredictably catastrophic events. A report in 2000 by Harvard Medical School’s Center for Health and the Global Environment found that extreme weather events have “caused severe crop damage and have exacted a significant economic toll for U.S. farmers over the past 20 years” and “could rise significantly due to greater climate variability, and to increases in insects, weeds, and plant diseases.” Total damages — including agricultural losses — from the 1988 drought and 1993 Midwest floods were $79 billion. In the future, “variability of precipitation — in time, space, and intensity — will make U.S. agriculture increasingly unstable and make it more difficult for U.S. farmers to plan what crops to plan and when.” [Harvard Medical School’s Center for Health and the Global Environment, 5/2000]

Crop Losses To Rise To Billions A Year, Doubling By The 2030s. Crop losses insured by the federal government have also risen substantially in the past two decades, due to higher participation by farmers, rising crop prices, and big loss years like 2008, when the federal program paid out nearly $8.6 billion, much of it because of flooding in the Midwest. Looking just at increased soil moisture that comes with higher precipitation driven by climate change, authors of a study published in 2002 by Global Environmental Change estimated that the roughly $1.5 billion per year in crop damage could double by the 2030s. And an April report by Environment America found that U.S. corn growers could face annual losses of $1.4 billion due to future climate change, looking just how higher temperatures reduce yields. [USDA Risk Management Agency; Global Environmental Change, 11/15/2002; Environment America, 4/2009]

Return Of The Dust Bowl? A 2007 report cites a potential agricultural loss of as much as $10 billion by 2090 in the Edwards Aquifer region of Texas, and productivity losses exceeding 50 percent for wheat and soybeans in the southern and Great Plains regions. Other research predicts that the American Southwest will by mid-century face extremely difficult choices between supplying water for agriculture and the region’s booming cities. A study reported in Science in April 2007 said that a drought similar to conditions during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s could become the norm in the Southwest by 2050. [Center for Integrative Environment Research at the University of Maryland, 10/2007; Science, 4/2007]

In 2007, the Center for Integrative Environment Research at the University of Maryland report, “The U.S. Economic Impacts of Climate Change and the Costs of Inaction,” included a review of previous studies on climate change impacts on agriculture and water for various regions of the United States:

The uneven nature of climate change impacts throughout the country makes the net impacts of global warming on the agricultural sector uncertain . . . Some northern regions are likely to experience fleeting economic benefits with more profitable crops migrating there (as the climate becomes hospitable to those crops.) As climate conditions continue to change, however, those temporary benefits may be lost. Other regions, such as the Southeast, West, and southern Great Plains may face challenges from increased temperatures, water stress, saltwater intrusion, and the potential increase in invasive species and pests — the impacts of which may cause costs to outweigh benefits.

American farmers, like all of us, have a huge stake in the fight to stem global climate change. To hold their future hostage to a rulemaking battle over ethanol would be a grave, shortsighted disservice.

Read an extended version of this post at the Center for American Progress website.