They won't rest until Americans begin starving to death;
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.
[...]
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.
But the economic forecast predicts that nearly 80 percent of the offsets would be earned through the planting of trees, mostly in the Midwest, the South and the Plains states.
The American Farm Bureau Federation and some farm-state Republican lawmakers have complained that the offsets program would push landowners to plant trees and terminate their leases with farmers.
You think I exaggerate?
There are farmers in MI that took advantage of a tax incentive program to allow land to remain unused and just sit unused instead of turning it into crops.
That suggestion seems to be an extension of that incentive.
Incremental change...
Very curious that they'd allow non-native forests across the PLAINS states.
The whole middle part of US is SUPPOSED to be endless miles of grasses. Just like it is now ;).
Now if they'd just come up with a plan to trap some of the heat-producing gasses in washington...
In related agricultural + government . . . .
might just be a joke but anything is possible when government weenies get involved
The Secretary of State,
Department for Environment, Food, Rural Affairs and Global Warming (DEFRAGLOBWARG)
QashQau House, Smith Square, London, SW1H 0AX
Dear Secretary of State,
My friend, who is in farming at the moment, recently received a check for £3,000 from the Rural Payments Agency for not rearing pigs. I would now like to join the “not rearing pigs” business.
In your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to rear pigs on, and which is the best breed of pigs not to rear? I want to be sure I approach this endeavor in keeping with all government policies, as dictated by the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy.
I would prefer not to rear bacon pigs, but if this is not the type you want not rearing, I will just as gladly not rear porkers. Are there any advantages in not rearing rare breeds such as Saddlebacks or Gloucester
Old Spots, or are there too many people already not rearing these?
As I see it, the hardest part of this program will be keeping an accurate record of how many pigs I haven’t reared. Are there any Government or Local Authority courses on this?
My friend is very satisfied with this business. He has been rearing pigs for forty years or so, and the best he ever made on them was £1,422 in 1968. That is – until this year, when he received a check for not rearing any.
If I get £3,000 for not rearing 50 pigs, will I get £6,000 for not rearing 100? I plan to operate on a small scale at first, holding myself down to about 4,000 pigs not raised, which will mean about £240,000 for the first year. As I become more expert in not rearing pigs, I plan to be more ambitious, perhaps increasing to, say, 40,000 pigs not reared in my second year, for which I should expect about £2.4 million from your department.
Incidentally, I wonder if I would be eligible to receive tradable carbon credits for all these pigs not producing harmful and polluting methane gases?
Another point: These pigs that I plan not to rear will not eat 2,000 tons of cereals. I understand that you also pay farmers for not growing crops. Will I qualify for payments for not growing cereals to not feed the pigs I don’t rear?
I am also considering the “not milking cows” business, so please send any information you have on that too. Please could you also include the current advice on untilled fields? Can this be done on an e-commerce basis with virtual fields (of which I seem to have several thousand acres)?
In view of the above you will realise that I will be totally unemployed, and will therefore qualify for unemployment benefits. I shall of course be voting for your party at the next general election. Yours faithfully, – Nigel Johnson-Hill
“http://sppiblog.org/news/capitalist-pigs-and-global-warming http://sppiblog.org/news/capitalist-pigs-and-global-warming
Ted Turner's "useless eaters" description of the citizens comes to mind.
I believe the old saying that most stupid decisions are due to incompetency not conspiracy (although greed trumps incompetency). But colossally stupid regulations on basic needs makes you wonder. Even the dullest politicians must realize that abundant,affordable energy and food is the foundation of prosperity.
The media admired knowledge economy is a compliment to and not a substitute for energy, resource and food production. Besides, the competition for the few profitable knowledge based jobs will be fierce as the entire developed world seems hell-bent on moving in the same direction. North America should embrace its resource advantage and the wealth it generates, not intentionally hobble it.
Those tax-payer subsidized trees will be clear-cut the moment food prices begin to spike. The drill, baby, drill mantra will soon follow. Millions of dollars will be wasted as these expensive lessons about food and energy are learned and this last decade or so will be remembered as a time of eco-insanity.
It's hard to grow a forest in a semi arid region. There is a reason that the region was grasslands, then tilled up for crop production or used for pasture.
As Eisenhower said " Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil; and you're a thousand miles from a corn field."
Silly Bureaucrats.
May I live long enough to see food become expensive.
Eisenhaur was one smart man.When my children were going to school in southern Sask, a teacher made a remark about that area before the trees were all cut down.He was informed by his class that ALL the trees that he was seeing were planted after the land was settled.There were NO trees in southern Sask except in the higher elevations around Cyprus Hills,Moose Mtn Prov. Park and the south slopes of the valleys.
Government experts . . . . always right :)
Earth Day predictions of 1970. The reason you shouldn’t believe Earth Day predictions of 2009.
Luckily, we haven't run out of oil, but have exhausted our supply of 70s fashion.
The media will assault us with tales of imminent disaster that always accompany the annual Earth Day Doom & Gloom Extravaganza.
Ignore them. They’ll be wrong. We’re confident in saying that because they’ve always been wrong. And always will be.
Need proof? Here are some of the hilarious, spectacularly wrong predictions made on the occasion of Earth Day 1970.
“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”
• Kenneth Watt, ecologist
“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
• George Wald, Harvard Biologist
“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”
• Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist
“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
• New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.”
• Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day
“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
• Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University
“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
• Life Magazine, January 1970
“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
Stanford's Paul Ehrlich announces that the sky is falling.
Stanford's Paul Ehrlich announces that the sky is falling.
“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.”
• Martin Litton, Sierra Club director
“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
• Sen. Gaylord Nelson
“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
Keep these predictions in mind when you hear the same predictions made today. They’ve been making the same predictions for 39 years. And they’re going to continue making them until…well…forever.
Here we are, 39 years later and the economy sucks, but the ecology’s fine. In fact this planet is doing a lot better than the planet on which those green lunatics live
A future predictament for those land owners will be creating habitat for wildlife on someone's special list. When an 'endangered' specie moves onto your property because you provided some enviromental service for society then the land owner runs the risk of losing a measure of control over their property. But then, in Canada, we don't have any effect property rights.
Reforestation is not a bad idea. With some land, soil erosion is a significant problem and reforestation or planting theses lands into grassland would be environmentally beneficial. I no longer lease out my land for grain farming, as several years ago I had it seeded to grassland, which I sell the hay off of. This is much more beneficial to the land and environment.
Despite the experience of having their best laid plans come undone, bureaucrats never seem to consider unintended consequences. Think of their plan to lace gasoline with ethanol. Farmers started selling their corn for ethanol and the price of corn went up creating hardship for poor people and extra expense for farmers who use corn to feed livestock.
I wonder what surprises await them with their plan to convert natural prairie to forests?
T are you talking about the garden in your moms backyard?
Stop lying, it makes you look like a fool.
Oops to late.
Soylent Green is people!!!
T at 11.10 am:
That is a very humorous comment, at least to anyone who actually lives on the prairies. Keep up the good work.
I wonder what surprises await them with their plan to convert natural prairie to forests?
~JMD
Stay tuned for a "Save the Endangered Richardson's Ground Squirrel" campaign.
One way to look at this is providing permanence to current farm subsidy programs which pay farmers to leave land fallow. Subsidies would violate free trade agreements after 2012 but tree planting would be the "green" way to cheat on those agreements. We'd get our farm subsidies and our carbon offsets too.
So once again they prove environmentalism is nothing but a political and economic sham.
Whats a matter with you people.
Don't you know you get your food from a grocery store....geesh. :(
It is mind boggling how some people who have college/university educations, are as dumb as a bag of hammers!!!!!!!!
Whats next??
It just gets better and better ... Bio Diesel or Trees ... Does anyone not recall the huge incentives for that ... WOW ... Can't wait for this brave new world ... At least I won't need to worry about dieting.
Things are never what they appear to be ... This messing around with forests and farms is a sham designed to combat the rampant obesity in the USA.
Fred
Unfortunately, all of those "distinguished" individuals (epistemological terrorists?) you quoted (that history has proven wrong ad nauseum) are still admired by the PC institutions and, without an ounce of humility, continue to spew pseudo-environmental hysteria.
The green jackboot is crushing US industry and impeding all growth. Thanks to a toxic combination of Federal agencies and the satanically litigious spawn of ENGOs, the war on prosperity can see an easy victory. That's the only war for which Obama actually has the stomach.
I wonder how much Chicom and India have paid for things like AGW and ITIL to divert funds from Wester economies and into their own.
Government "incentives" invariably end up causing trouble. People rush in to benefit from them, so the economy becomes distorted and less productive than it would have been otherwise. That results in, among other things, increased poverty. Then the "social justice" parasites chime in and try to blame capitalism for the sins of its enemies.
Let me continue the story….
Once the trees have grown on the former cropland, the critters will move in. (Perhaps the government will even move them in for you, if you’re really lucky.) Then the green weanies will tell the landowner that she can not cut a tree on her own property because it has now become habitat for furry creatures. Soon, the resident bambi and friends will eat the crops on the remaining acres of surrounding farmland. Then the coyotes and other predators move in, because they like the taste of venison and rabbit. Then these carnivores discover the farmers’ livestock, and acquire a taste for domestic meat. Then the farmer gets to battle with the government over the losses incurred on her crops and livestock, - losses that happened because of government programs. A farmer’s version of the circle of life, so to speak. I’d be reading the fine print on that EPA legislation.
Gotta go; I feel a sad country and western song comin’ on.
spike 1 @ 10:50 Even pictures taken of the Cypress Hills taken in the 1880s when Fort Walsh was built show barren hills that are now covered by forests. I am guessing that naturally occurring prairie wild fires kept areas tree barren until settlement curtailed the wild fires.
I forget which monthly issue of National Geographic it was in the 1980s that said, complete with pictures, there were more trees in North America now than there were when us whites first came to the New World.
The very fertile farming area I live in, just north of Saskatoon, has a lot more tree stands now than it did in the late 1800s. Guess why? Answer, no wild fires and every farm has planted wind breaks.
I will grant T one comment, there is some cropped very sandy land that would be better put to grass. However putting good productive clay loam land to grass or to non-natural tree stands is nonsense or even criminal other than to create wind breaks around farm yards or around fields.
Soylent Green is the end game of the eco wack jobs.
Dig a hole.
Fill the hole.
Dig another hole.
Fill that one too.
Dig a few more holes.
Fill all those holes too.
America: on the road to prosperity.
Fred, thanks for the 1970s and 80s dire predictions. Hopefully you do not mind that I have taken the liberty of copy and pasting your list into an MS Word document to send out to people who were born during that time and have heard nothing but the garbage put out by the AGW crowd.
Phil, liberals have never figured that out.
Why not? Collectivization of farms worked out so well under Stalin and Mao.
Hey Ken,
Copy & paste away . . . . spread the good word that experts were wrong then and are wrong now.
Buy long underwear . . we are all gonna need 'em :)
Fred - thanks, I will save those for my lefty friends.
The the majority of Cypress Hills trees are mostly lodgepole pine that require fire to release seed. The pictures you saw were probably after the 1885 fire wiped all the trees and the fort.
Fred, thanks. Around here we keep our long underwear handy and generally take them off July 31 and put them back on August 1.
Phil, yes I know. Had some close relatives that enjoyed the largess of socialism under Lenin and Stalin. Lenin actually started the collectivization, Stalin just improved on it. Kinda like the NDP would like to do here, at least according to the comments of two former NDP cabinet ministers. Anybody remember "land bank"?
Ken- The Cypress Hills cover a large area. Fort Walsh was in a less wooded area, because their animals needed grass. If you walk around out there, you'll find evidence of logging, done before it became a park. It's a very cool place, considering it's surrounded by bald prairie.
Biology was not one of my better subjects, but something about this plan seems a bit off. Having grown up, and worked in the bush for many years, I know that mature trees have a very slow growth rate. I don't think a big old spruce tree uses very much co2, compared to a bunch of fast growing corn plants. Once a forest is established, it probably uses less co2 than most agricultural lands.
There's also the matter of water. If the plan is to convert marginal farmland, it's doubtful that a forest is going to have much luck getting established, unless they plan to irrigate the trees.
If they use deciduous forest, the falling leaves will probably release most of the carbon they collected, and if they use coniferous, the rate of carbon capture won't be much faster than a good crop of grass. This is nothing but a waste of time.
Man is good at exploiting nature, but when we try to control it, we always screw up. This climate thing will be the worst screw up, ever.
Two words; "Buffalo Commons" google it.
This crackpot hippie-Gaia give the land back to nature fantasy nears reality every second we allow these anti-America anti-humanist Green prohibitionist crackots near the levers of power. BO's admin is litterally permeated with these mad misanthropic bastards.
Question; Is it just a coincidence that high level Green/sustainability planners are ALL depopulationists and they design land use schemes which take more and more agricultural land out of food production? Bio-fuel production has already been responsible for millions of deaths in the 3rd world.
Remember North America is the food basket for much of the 3rd world who precariously struggle against famine daily.
Even if it was not intended, the end result of green/climate/sustainability negative impacts on Western food production is as deadly as a planned famine in vulnerable nations who rely on the west's excess food production capacity
Were they planning to have dueling subsidies? Fuel corn vs. forests?
Genius!
I would propose that more than half of the hunger in the modern world is political.
Thats a conservative estamate.
I would propose that more than half of the hunger in the modern world is political.
Thats a conservative estamate.
Posted by: orvict at December 29, 2009 1:14 PM
I'd add, a large percentage is tribal.
During my farming phase,30 years back, I cleared and drained productive Class #1 land on the front and planted difficult slopes at the back to trees.
The slopes were expensive and risky to farm and produced little.....the cleared land produced good yields and was inexpensive to farm.
Prior to 1800, the Great Plains of NA were called the "Great American Desert", because that region was arid to semi-arid.....natural climate change changed all that.
Stalin and later Kruschev's "virgin lands" programe futilly endeavered to crop similar land on the steppes......Now Al Gore declares the nearly extinct Aral Sea as evidence of climate change while in reality it is the result of ill-considered land usage....irrigating semi-arid land.
The Lethbridge area is blessed by plentiful irrigation water from the St Mary's dam which impounds spring runoff from the mountains. If the green-nuts had their way the St. Mary's Dam would be removed so the river could "run free".
“America is at that awkward stage. It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.”
........ those are the opening lines of “101 Things To Do ‘Til The Revolution” by Claire Wolfe.
The AGW mold on the surface is only evidence of greater rot beneath. The battle has only begun.
Didn't the US gov't help plant pine on the worn out cotton land? That has contributed in some part to the ongoing softwood lumber disputes. From what I have read Canadian lumber tends to have fewer knots and is straighter but I'm knot sure about that.
EcoNuts . . . how long do you roast them before eating and do you add salt ?
The world is a crazy place because, too often, crazy people are the ones elected to office. Why!?
Why is an otherwise intelligent populace duped, again and again, into electing nut-cases to places of power?
The reasons: (in descending order)
1) The Media
2) Hollywood
3) United Nations
4) Universities
5) Public Schools
EcoNuts- not so subtle taste of hemp; mushrooms; and BO, most often served half-baked.
I have seen herds of elk around the cypress hills.
seems so strange way out on the prairies.
Fred @ 9:28, thank you for that example of classic British humour! Gave me a good laugh for the day!
As to planting trees in place of farms; I hate to mention it, but after having spent eleven years in the B.C. Forest Service trying to plant trees where they had previously grown, let me tell you hippies it's no easy feat to get them to grow anywhere!
The work is very hard,tedious,backbreaking,only very physically fit people can do it. Who do you envision doing the hard work? I know the answer, as it's always the same with utopians: SOMEONE ELSE! Coniferous trees will only grow on specific sites,and seedlings are notoriously delicate. Plant a million, and you're lucky if half that last to the third year.
Seedling production is expensive,and we planted the trees with the idea that some day the cost would be recovered by harvesting the trees. If there is no plan to harvest, how are you going to recover the cost? Money, as they say, grows on trees only when you harvest them.
Bald prairie is probably only good for grass or a few weed species like poplar,so what market is there for them,firewood? You've just defeated your purpose.
As to the farm land to be taken out of food production, I suppose we could all do like Elizabeth May wants, and grow a little garden plot each, and provide our entire food supply in this kind- to- the- earth and natural way. Gaia would be ecstatic!
Educational institutions should all be required to teach a course, not an elective, in the law of unintended consequences, maybe we could raise a generation that thinks beyond their knee-jerk reaction to every problem that comes up.
Yet people go on that the earth's population is growing too wildly and needs sustenance.
I don't mind having protected forested areas but this proposal takes the cake. There is so much arable land, so many days in a growing season and so many economies that depend on produce. Truly, we have let the tree-huggers see the trees for the forest.
Couple of things:
I had a friend from Western Canada. He told me trees were so rare that rural directions would be on the lines of "Go north on Hwy 12 till you get to the tree, then take the next left".
This week, on 60 Minutes, they had a piece on the SoCal drought caused in part by the ban on pumping water to preserve the 3-inch darter. As usual, CBS presented it as a fight between farmers and environmentalists. In reality, it is a fight between Los Angelenos, who want water so they have lush green lawns and golf courses in the middle of a desert, and farmers, who want water so they can have lush green crops in the middle of the desert. Without the pumps, there isn't enough for both.
Richard Russell of the Dow Theory Letters (one of the best investment letters I've ever read) lives in San Diego. He scoffs at people who want green lawns there (it is also a desert). He plants cacti and decorates with natural stone.
Finally, let's not ever forget that Lizzie Moonbat May campaigned in the last election for increased logging in the Maritimes. Nice green credentials, Dizzie.
dp
A little forest trivia - forests are more desirable for carbon capture because they store many growing seasons worth of carbon as opposed to corn which gives it up on an annual basis. If the wood products derived from forest production are preserved within buildings, furniture, paper etc (even within landfills), the carbon is sunk longer. This extends also to the litter on a forest floor after crown closure and shading cools down the duff slowing down decay loss (of carbon). As a professional forester, I am troubled by the uncritical parroting of the AGW narrative and zeal with which many of my colleagues have lined up to rent seek on this issue.
Well, come on - fair is fair. We plan on starving the peoples of other countries by turning their food crops into guilt relieving, Gaia friendly bio-fuels, so it's only fair that a few Americans starve along the way from governmental stupidity.
It's real life consequences like this that leave the mind reeling over where the EPA designation of C02 as a pollutant will take us. Starving and freezing in the dark - oh how fortunate I am to have a government that wants to take me back to the hellish days of the 12th century - where the average male life expectancy was 42 years. Well, I suppose there's no sense in whining about it - after all, we have to find a way to pay for our shiny new healthcare package. Having the population starve before they reach prime heart disease and cancer age will be a big bonus, and just think of the money we'll save since we no longer have to fight obesity related diseases. Genius, pure genius I tell you.