Cool Foods Campaign

I'd like to put a plug out there for the Center for Food Safety's Cool Foods Campaign. They are doing some terrific work to push the govt. to include industrial agriculture regulation in the Climate and Energy bill. The current proposal does not sufficiently address the impact agriculture has on climate change, and the significant potential it could have in reversing current destructive climatic trends. Here is what the Center for Food Safety (CFS) says...

"Though research unequivocally concludes that industrial agriculture is one of the major contributors to global warming, neither international nor domestic policies adequately take on this issue," said Debi Barker, Director of the Center for Food Safety's Climate Change and Agriculture Program." Barker notes that at least 60 percent of all dangerous nitrous oxide (NO2) emissions and 40 percent of all methane (CH4) emissions are produced by industrial farming, primarily from the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer and intensive livestock operations respectively.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international consultative body, reports conservatively that industrial agriculture accounts for at least 14 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Many scientists maintain that this number is even higher, falling in the 25 to 30 percent range when the total energy backpack of the current food system is taken into account.

"The environmental goals of climate legislation cannot be compromised, but without addressing the impacts of industrial agriculture practices on climate, that is exactly what's taking place," added Andrew Kimbrell, Founder and Executive Director of CFS. "If the United States is serious about creating real environmental change, this piece of legislation must recognize the impacts of industrial agriculture on climate and take steps to reverse trends by requiring a shift to low-impact, sustainable agriculture."