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Global Warming Program Reports
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Executive Summary
America’s reliance on fossil fuels – coal, oil, and natural gas – is
fueling global warming and causing a host of other environmental,
economic, and security problems. And while the impacts vary from region
to region, global warming threatens all sectors of our economy, and
agriculture is no exception.
Not all the effects of global
warming will be bad for agriculture; growing seasons will be longer,
and increased carbon dioxide levels encourage plant growth. But global
warming will make some of the challenges that agriculture faces
significantly worse, including increasing temperatures, more damaging
storms, ozone pollution, and spreading pests, weeds, and diseases.
This
report examines the impact of global warming on corn, America’s largest
crop, which is particularly vulnerable to productivity losses from the
higher temperatures expected from global warming.
Climate
changes since 1981 have already cost corn growers worldwide about $1.2
billion per year.1 A recent study by Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory and the Carnegie Institution found that combined changes in
temperature and precipitation since 1981 resulted in lower yields in
corn and other crops, leading to wasted productivity and lost revenue.
Unfortunately, these trends in climatic changes are only expected to
worsen unless global warming pollution declines substantially in coming
years.
Based on a recent U.S. government assessment, this
report estimates that global warming will cost corn growers in the
United States at least another $1.4 billion per year in the future, as
temperatures increase. (See Figure 1 for the estimated cost to each
state.) A recent report by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, a
collaboration of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and 12 other
federal agencies, estimated that an additional increase in temperature
of 2° F and in carbon dioxide of 60 parts per million would have
opposing effects on corn yield. Overall, corn yields in the Midwest and
South would decrease by an estimated 3 percent relative to a world
without global warming.2 At today’s production levels and prices, the
productivity loss would cost the 10 most vulnerable states an average
of $116 million a year.
Destructive storms, pests, weeds,
diseases, and ozone pollution will result in further damages to corn
and agriculture from global warming. The losses above only represent
the negative effects of higher temperatures and the positive effect of
higher carbon dioxide levels, and they assume an adequate water supply
for each crop. More and more rain is expected to fall during intense
storms, saturating soils, increasing the risk of floods, and making it
harder for plants and soils to absorb water before it washes into
streams and rivers. Crop nuisances, such as insect pests, weeds, and
diseases, will have greater range and reproductive speed with increased
temperatures. And ozone pollution, from which rural parts of the
Midwest and East suffer more than almost anywhere else on Earth, is
toxic to plants and is expected to become more concentrated with the
increased temperatures of global warming.3
Agriculture can help
reduce further damage from global warming and spur the transition to a
clean energy economy. Clean energy resources, such as wind turbines,
solar panels, and environmentally sustainable biomass, can provide
farmers an independent source of power and income while reducing global
warming pollution. By investing in these and other clean energy
solutions, we can help stop global warming and boost the agricultural
economy.
Improved farming practices can reduce global warming
emissions and keep more carbon in soils, and a well-designed global
warming program could reward farmers for such improvements. Farmers
could receive incentives through a dedicated climate fund established
by Congress. The revenue for the fund would come from the payments
energy companies make to purchase pollution permits and would represent
a relatively small percentage of the overall revenue collected by the
government from such permits. Importantly, emission reductions
resulting from such a dedicated fund would be in addition to the
reductions required by power plants and other sources regulated under
the program. Decision-makers should unleash clean energy to help
rebuild America’s economy and stop the worst effects of global warming.
Specifically, decision-makers should:
• Establish
science-based pollution targets to reduce total U.S. global warming
emissions by at least 35 percent below today’s levels by 2020 and 80
percent by 2050, and require the targets to be periodically updated as
science evolves;
• Auction all of the pollution allowances and
devote all of the proceeds to helping the nation use energy more
efficiently, shifting to renewable energy, providing incentives to
America’s farmers, and addressing impacts on consumers – particularly
those with low- and moderate-incomes, workers, vulnerable communities,
and natural resources;
• Strictly limit and ensure strong rules for carbon offsets so that our efforts to reduce pollution are effective;
•
Require utilities to obtain at least 25 percent of their electricity
from renewable sources by 2025 and to reduce their energy use by 15
percent by 2020; and
• Cut energy use in new buildings in half by 2020 on the path toward zero energy by 2030.
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