The U.S. House of Representatives has passed historic legislation to address climate change and create new opportunities for agriculture and rural communities.

The bill would provide a modest boost to wind power by requiring utilities to get 20 percent of electricity from renewable sources by 2020. The requirement would fall as low as 12 percent for utilities that cut electricity use through conservation. A U.S. Department of Energy study found that producing 20 percent of America’s electricity from wind (a higher goal than this bill sets) would turn the nation’s midsection into an electricity exporter, creating roughly 3,000 permanent rural jobs in each Great Plains state and many times that number of temporary construction jobs.

In addition, the bill caps the “greenhouse gases” – carbon dioxide, methane, etc. – emitted by major companies. A company that exceeds its cap would have to pay someone else to offset its emissions. Such companies could pay farmers and ranchers to remove carbon dioxide from the air by building higher soil organic matter and for other steps to reduce greenhouse gases. Those payments would be administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects the cost of the legislation in higher energy prices at $170 per year per U.S. household. That cost pales in comparison to the cost of inaction. A panel of leading scientists concluded that climate change is occurring, and there is 90 percent certainty it is caused by human activity. For agriculture, the nation’s leading panel of climate scientists projects a drier West with more severe droughts and across the nation more extreme whether events – floods as well as droughts. Coastal flooding from melting ice would require millions of Americans and others to relocate at enormous cost.

Common-sense measures such as this legislation can save our children and grandchildren from future calamity, while creating new opportunities for rural America in helping solve the greatest environmental threat facing our generation. Senate action on the issue is not yet completed.

Contact: Chuck Hassebrook, chuckh@cfra.org or 402.687.2103 x 1018 for more information.