Hill Heat

Barbara Boxer (D-CA)

Washington Post As we are moving to address some of our nation’s great challenges – revitalizing our economy, putting Americans back to work and passing health insurance reform – scientists are telling us we have a short window to take the steps that are needed to avoid the ravages of global warming. We must also act quickly to ensure America leads the world in clean energy technology. We need to confront all of these issues; we don’t have the luxury of picking and choosing. By creating powerful incentives for clean energy, the bill that Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and I will introduce in September will restore our economy and create jobs at home while reducing carbon pollution and making us less dependent on foreign oil. John Doerr – one of the nation’s leading venture capitalists, who helped launch Google and Amazon.com—has predicted that the investment capital that will flow into clean energy will dwarf the amount invested in high-tech and biotech combined. It will create millions of jobs in America – building wind turbines, installing solar panels on homes and producing a new fleet of electric and hybrid vehicles. We can successfully address all of these challenges. Our forebears have set the pace ever since our nation was founded. President Obama has reminded us that America built the transcontinental railroad and established the National Academy of Sciences in the midst of the Civil War. In the 1960s, we passed historic civil rights legislation even as we took on the challenge of going to the moon. At the end of the day, leaders have to lead when action is needed.

Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX)

Washington Post Cap-and-trade legislation will fail under its own weight, just like health-care legislation. Each massive, misguided policy is being doggedly pushed by the Obama administration and the Democratic congressional leadership in a narrow, partisan fashion that will contribute to and ensure its failure. We could forecast the American outrage, based on past experience with these types of proposals, and if the Democrats succeed in forcing these bad policies on American families, they will be held accountable by the public. The administration’s health-reform proposal would nationalize and bureaucratize health care in America. Cap-and-trade, meanwhile, will kill 2 million American jobs; shrink the household incomes of average Americans by more than $1,000 annually; and penalize the industries that produce our nation’s energy – at a time when we are already concerned about the high costs of fuel and utilities. It will increase our dependence on foreign energy imports, which is already at an astounding 60 percent. We have seen such proposals before, and the good news is that they have failed miserably because Americans are well informed and understand how they could impact their lives.

James Inhofe (R-OK)

Washington Post As lawmakers return to Washington and assess the fiery backlash of constituent opposition to government-run health care, those mired in the thick of the climate change debate are wondering: What does it all mean for us? The warring factions over climate policy should step back and try to discern whether constituents are signaling a more basic distrust of new government schemes. Polling data from the past several months indicates that such public distrust is real, deep and widespread. This means the Democrats’ government-run, cap-and-trade scheme – in fact, an energy tax that extends into every corner of American life – now faces an even higher hurdle, including growing opposition from many Democrats in the Senate. Such distrust will only grow if Democrats insist, as they did in the House, on crafting climate legislation in their inner sanctums, with no time for serious public input and debate. And this is exactly the course being drawn in the Senate. Still, Washington’s appetite for spending, taxing and regulating – cap-and trade contains elements of each – is boundless. So, despite having public opinion on our side, those opposed to cap-and-trade are facing a monumental battle this fall in the Senate. There will be a mad race for 60 votes, and the outcome will reverberate beyond 2010.

From the Wonk Room.

The American Energy Alliance (AEA), a new polluter front group, is touring the nation to smear President Barack Obama’s clean energy reform agenda. Employees riding the “American Energy Express” bus are spreading the conservative claim that the American Clean Energy and Security Act will “cripple our sluggish economy.” AEA is the 501 c(4) offshoot of the Institute for Energy Research, a right-wing oil-industry think tank run by Robert Bradley, a former speechwriter for Kenneth Lay. E&E News reports that AEA’s “Energy Town Hall” bus tour pictures workers in hard hats:

The American Energy Alliance, which is affiliated with the conservative Institute for Energy Research, has begun a four-week bus tour to county fairs, sporting events and public meetings in several coal-reliant states. Representatives of the group will travel in a large blue bus carrying the slogan “Stop the National Energy Tax, Save American Jobs” and a picture of workers in hard hats. They will cross Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia and Virginia. Yesterday, AEA officials participated in a rally with another group, Americans for Prosperity, in Zanesville, Ohio; a day earlier, they visited a county fair in western Pennsylvania.

AEA argues it has “no ties to any political party”:

AEA has no ties to any political party, and it has no interest in supporting the agenda of any particular political party.

However, AEA is tightly connected to the Republican Party and right-wing oil interests. In fact, all of its employees are former House Republican staffers:

Michael Bennet (D-CO)

E&E News “I’d like to hear what they have to say about it before I shoot my mouth off,” Bennet’s signed on as co-sponsor to a bill from Sen. Tom Udall, (D-N.M.) and Udall of Colorado that would enact a 25-percent-by-2025 renewable electricity standard. “It’s been an enormous positive for Colorado,” Bennet said. “The market adapted. Our evidence is that it works.” When it comes to Colorado’s fossil fuels, Bennet for now is stepping behind natural gas, calling for it to have a bigger role in the Senate bill. “It was essentially absent from the House bill,” Bennet said. “I’d like to know why that is.” Bennet said he also sees “opportunities to tie together natural gas with intermittent power sources like sun and wind.” “I don’t have any specifics today,” Bennet said about what he wants to see. “I’m talking with people in the environmental community and natural gas people and hearing what their ideas are.” “In Colorado now we’re confronting these issues because of the water shortages that we have,” Bennet said. “If we are going to be able to assure that another generation of Coloradans are able to farm, or one after that, we need some answers to these questions how do we preserve our water resources.”

Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)

E&E News Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) has long advocated price controls as part of a cap-and-trade bill, including a “safety valve” in previous versions of his own. “I think it’s something that makes a lot of sense to look at,” Bingaman said. “These cap-and-trade bills have so many pieces,” Bingaman said. “I don’t know that you can point to one thing and say, ‘Stick that in and everyone jumps on board.’ I think it’s much more complicated than that.”

Kit Bond (R-MO)

E&E News Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) complained during an EPW Committee hearing yesterday about comments from Boxer and Kerry that they may not even be putting out allocation language with their draft bill in early September. “That troubles me a great deal,” Bond said. “We can’t leave these allocations blank, placeholders, if we’re going to give Americans a fair, open and transparent view of the legislation.”

Barbara Boxer (D-CA)

E&E News Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) is considering a “price collar” for her global warming bill that could help to curb the economic costs from a cap-and-trade program. “I don’t know why we can’t consider this as one more way to give more certainty,” Boxer said during a hearing today. “I’m looking at it, is what I’m saying.”

Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)

E&E News Among other things, the senators said they would seek a “border adjustment mechanism” that could slap trade sanctions on carbon-intensive goods from developing countries that do not have strong enough climate policies. “In the absence of an adequate international agreement, a border measure could help to prevent countries from responding to climate change less rigorously than the United States and undercutting the effectiveness of our climate policy by shifting, rather than reducing, greenhouse gas emissions,” the senators wrote. Other Senators that signed on: Russ Feingold (D-WI), Carl Levin (D-MI), Evan Bayh (D-IN), Robert Casey (D-PA), Arlen Specter (D-PA), Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Robert Byrd (D-WV), Al Franken (D-MN)

New York Times As Congress considers energy and climate legislation,” the senators wrote, “it is important that such a bill include provisions to maintain a level playing field for American manufacturing.” “It is essential that any clean energy legislation not only address the crisis of climate change, but include strong provisions to ensure the strength and viability of domestic manufacturing,” the letter said.

Kit Bond (R-MO)

“E&E News’:http://www.eenews.net/EEDaily/2009/08/05/1/ Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) criticized the power companies for even trying to negotiate with congressional Democrats. Either way, he said, the electric utilities lose. “That’s bargaining with somebody on how they’re going to hang you,” Bond said. “They’ll hang you with minimal pain, or they’ll torture you to death.”

Max Baucus (D-MT)

E&E News “So let us see if we can figure out how to distribute emission allowances in a way that one might call just,” Baucus said at a hearing on allocations today. “Let us see if we can figure out how to give all Americans what they deserve.” “The House bill provided solid relief to low-income Americans through these means,” he said. “The Senate should match it, or build on it.” “I don’t want to prejudge at this point,” he said. “I just want to take a good, strong, hard, fresh look at allowances to see what makes sense. Everything can be improved upon.”

CQ “I doubt it’ll be major. There’ll be some,” Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus , D-Mont., said Tuesday, when asked about changes to the allocation formula.

WV Metro News “There are a number of ways to use allowance revenues to mitigate the cost of climate legislation on consumers and businesses,” Senator Baucus said.  “For example, Congress could use the money from auctioning allowances to cut taxes by cutting marginal rates, by cutting capital gains rates, by cutting payroll taxes or by doing all of the above.”

ENews USA He said, “Economists expect that these allowances will have a value, like cash. Thus, many argue that the government should not just give these allowances away. Many argue that the government should auction them, and return the proceeds to consumers. Others argue that the government should allocate a portion of the allowances to regulated companies. Doing so would soften the effects of putting a price on carbon.” . . . “Allowances will have significant value. In 2012, the first year of the program in the House-passed bill, the Congressional Budget Office [CBO] puts their value at about $60 billion. For the period of 2010 to 2019, they amount to more than $870 billion.” Baucus cites the CBO which says, “[T]he creation of allowances by the government should be recorded as revenues. That logic does not hinge on whether the government sells or, instead, gives away the allowances. Allowances would have significant value even if given away because the recipients could sell them or, in the case of a covered entity, use them to avoid incurring the cost of compliance.”

Lamar Alexander (R-TN)

Washington Post “We want an America in which we create hundreds of thousands of ‘green jobs,’ but not at the expense of destroying tens of millions of red, white and blue jobs.”

Byron Dorgan (D-ND)

Washington Post “It’s very hard for Congress to do one big thing, much less do a couple of really big issues at the same time,” said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), whose state produces coal as well as wind power. Dorgan, who could be a swing vote on a climate bill, said he believes in capping carbon emissions, but not this way. He fears that cap-and-trade will create a market open to manipulation, like existing securities markets. He remains noncommittal about his ultimate vote. “We have a whole mountain range to climb before we get there,” he said.

Tom Harkin (D-IA)

Washington Post “What they did, we’ll keep,” said  Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. “We’re going to maybe do some other things that would maybe embellish what they did in the House.” He wants to be more generous with “carbon offset” programs that allow farmers to be paid for no-till agriculture that keeps carbon in the soil.

Mike Johanns (R-NE)

Delta Farm Press “If the United States passes this bill (without China and India), we’re not going to impact temperatures to any significant degree. Isn’t that correct?” “‘Because overall land area and crops decline due to aforestation, the modeling indicates a net decrease in total agricultural soil carbon storage as carbon is transferred from agricultural soils to the aforestation pool.’ “The whole purpose of this hearing is just to be honest with people. So, what’s going out of production? The important thing about that is it affects the pork producer, the cattle guy — it beats the living daylights out of them. Why? Because prices will go up. They’re out there saying, ‘Look, my input costs are going to go up with electricity, natural gas, fertilizer.’ “Just tell them: how many acres are going out of production?” “Many of the offsets (Vilsack) speaks about wouldn’t go to the row crop person to offset his higher energy, fertilizer and other costs,” Johanns continued. “It would go to the person who is planting the forestland. “But, again, unless you can quantify this, you can’t sell this plan. It becomes the ‘hope and a prayer’ plan for agriculture because you can’t tell farmers and ranchers what they’ll be exposed to in terms of input costs. That’s a huge issue.” It’s no consolation “to stand with one foot in the campfire and one in the ice bucket and say, ‘on average, I’m in good shape,’” said Johanns. “It’s no consolation to tell farmers and ranchers, ‘you’re going to be in good shape, on average,’ if you don’t know the regional differences, the crop differences, if you can’t tell them how much land will go out of production. “And yet we have a House bill (Waxman/Markey) that passed. I find that shocking. I find it amazingly shocking that could happen without the aforementioned information being available.

John Barrasso (R-WY)

Billings Gazette Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., calls it a ‘job-killer’ that would result in “stripping red, white and blue jobs, and then subsidizing a few green jobs in their place.”

Max Baucus (D-MT)

E&E News “We’re going to, in the Finance Committee, have hearings on and fully intend to mark up allowances, which allowances are free allowances, as well as what allowances are auctioned.” “On allocations, the last time, in the Clean Air Act, that was a much smaller deal,” Baucus said. “This is much more important. And also, it is a tax measure. It’s a tax bill. And if the House bill were referred to a committee, it’d be automatically referred to the Finance Committee because of revenue.”

Kit Bond (R-MO)

Springfield News-Leader Blunt appeared at Saturday’s meeting with Sen. Kit Bond, who vowed to raise a lot of questions when the bill gets to the Senate. He said most sources are telling him it would make energy bills double. “That’s just a guess,” said Bond. “It may only go up 50 percent, it may go up 200 percent rather than 100 percent. Nobody really knows how much it will cost other than it will cost.” . . . Bond said that with China and India refusing to adopt cap-and-trade provisions, getting the United States to abide by them won’t make a huge impact on climate change.

Ben Cardin (D-MD)

E&E News “I like the House bill, don’t get me wrong,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.). “But I think we can do better.”

Bob Corker (R-TN)

Grist “I didn’t think it was possible, but the Waxman-Markey climate bill appears to be even more problematic than the climate bill that tanked in the Senate last spring,” he said, referring to the Lieberman-Warner bill that he voted against in 2008.  “I don’t know of many special interests that don’t receive a pay-off in this [Waxman-Markey] legislation, and if it comes to the Senate floor in this form, I’ll vote against it.” “I want to tell you that I wish we would just talk about a carbon tax, 100 percent of which would be returned to the American people. So there’s no net dollars that would come out of the American people’s pockets.”

Mike Johanns (R-NE)

Des Moines Register But without more economic analysis, Vilsack is trying to sell the climate bill on a “hope and a prayer,” says Mike Johnanns.

Johanns “Cap-and-trade threatens to change the landscape of American agriculture, and we need to get a better understanding of just how deep the impact will be,” Johanns said. “It is necessary for the Senate as well as farmers and ranchers across the country to know the facts about how cap-and-trade will affect agriculture. I am pleased Chairman Harkin has agreed to hold more hearings, and I hope they, along with a committee mark-up, are scheduled soon so we can give this critical issue a more in-depth look.”

Mary Landrieu (D-LA)

E&E News “I’m using this time to try respectfully to educate members of my caucus, and maybe some Republicans, about the importance of natural gas, the importance of domestic energy security, so we don’t lose that in this debate.” Landrieu said. “It’s not just about cleaning up the environment. It’s about securing America’s economic future. And both are important.”

Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)

E&E News “That’s the objective, as far as I’m concerned,” added Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.). “Because the glide path has to be established that enables us to get to 80 percent in 2050. You can’t get there unless you start aggressively pushing.”

John McCain (R-AZ)

Wall Street Journal “I believe climate change is real . . . but this 1,400-page bill is a farce. They bought every industry off—steel mills, agriculture, utilities,” he says. So you wouldn’t vote for the House bill? “I would not only not vote for it,” he laughs, “I am opposed to it entirely, because it does damage to those of us who believe that we need to act in a rational fashion about climate change.”

SENATE SUMMARY 7/29/2009

Max Baucus (D-MT)

E&E News “There’s a reason why the House bill came up with its formula,” Baucus said. “And I suppose a lot of those same reasons will apply over here, too. But the Senate’s a little different than the House. We’ll take a fresh look, but respective of what the House did. We’ll look at ways to make sure U.S. companies are not taken advantage of, or discriminated against,” he said. “The trade-related remedies is one way.”

Kent Conrad (D-ND)

E&E News “On the energy bill to reduce our dependence, it is so centrally important to the economy that it needs to be done as soon as we can get it done, and there you have a chance for pretty strong bipartisan support,” Conrad said.

Byron Dorgan (D-ND)

EPW “…The second half of it, as my colleague described, is not something we are doing in this bill, but the ability to continue hydraulic fracturing, decade after decade, I think for nearly 50 years, I am not aware of any evidence that there is any contamination of groundwater with hydraulic fracturing when companies have followed the appropriate guidelines and regulations.”

James Inhofe (R-OK)

EPW Minority In the coming weeks, I intend to go through every single page of this climate bill, revealing the massive amount of spending, the labyrinth of new regulations, and expansion of government agencies and programs…I think the time is right to peel back the green veil and expose this 1,400-page monument to big government. There’s a lot in there, and at times the bill gets very complicated. But over the next several weeks, I plan to focus on some of the bill’s most damaging provisions, as well as those that reinforce the criticisms I’ve been making. Before the United States Senate moves to vote on the largest tax increase in history, the American public deserves to know exactly what is in this bill.

Mike Johanns (D-NE)

Des Moines Register “…you can have one foot in the campfire and another in the ice bucket, and on average you’d be just right, despite the fact that you’d be on fire. Similarly, using averages to estimate the impact of cap-and-trade does not help farmers and ranchers to calculate the true costs. Perhaps American agriculture will be fully on board with the secretary after reviewing solid analysis.”

John McCain (R-AZ)

The Hill “It depends on whether the administration has a proposal. That’s generally the way we work, but obviously that’s not been the case here,” McCain said. “It also depends on whether there’s a tangible desire for bipartisanship and whether the president decides to lead. I think that some of us have a legitimate desire to say, ‘Well, what is your proposal?’ to the president.”

Jay Rockefeller (R-WV)

Daily Mail “I’m glad to hear from so many West Virginians about this really important issue,” Rockefeller said. “I will absolutely fight for the future of coal and jobs in our state. I will not support an energy bill that threatens West Virginia’s future.”

John Barrasso (R-WY)

E&E News “Last year, the committee produced a bill, got to the floor, never got anywhere,” said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), a member of the EPW Committee. “I’m expecting the same thing this year.”

Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)

E&E News Earlier this year, Bingaman said he would rather see the Senate tackle energy on its own and then come back to climate. Bingaman last week was not as specific, saying that that “there are a lot of complex questions that obviously are raised by cap-and-trade proposals.” “We’re still in a learning process in most committees,” he added. . . “I assume [Reid]’s waiting to see what the various committees come up with before he makes any judgment,” Bingaman said. “He’s got a difficult job packaging it all up and figuring what the procedure ought to be that gets us to a positive conclusion.”

Barbara Boxer (D-CA)

E&E News “To me, the more committees that are involved, the happier I am, because you get more and more colleagues that get to understand it, that get to be part of it,” Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) told reporters last week. “The more colleagues that play a role, the better.” . . . “I am going to have to walk away from some things I believe should be in the bill,” she said.

Sherrod Brown (D-OH)

Roll Call Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) has been pressing to make sure the measure won’t create an incentive for manufacturing companies to move jobs overseas to China or India. Brown said he hasn’t gotten much traction in his push for trade protections, but he predicted that top negotiators could not afford to ignore him. “They don’t likely get a bill if they don’t deal with manufacturing,” he said.

Tom Carper (D-DE)

E&E News Yet other Democrats on the committee, including Baucus and Sens. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) and Tom Carper (D-Del.), will push Boxer toward the middle. “My hope is the legislation when it leaves our committee will be centrist,” Carper said.

Byron Dorgan (D-ND)

E&E News Moments after hosting a DPC luncheon with three corporate executives who support cap-and-trade legislation last week, Dorgan took to the floor for about 10 minutes to question efforts in the Senate to move on climate via the House-passed bill. “I know a lot of work has gone into that legislation, but my preference would be that we start to explore other directions,” Dorgan said, citing concerns about speculative trading in the carbon markets.

Roll Call “I am for a low-carbon future,” Dorgan said. “But, in my judgment, those that would bring to the floor of the Senate a replication of what has been done in the House, with over 400 pages describing the cap-and-trade piece, will find very little favor from me, and I expect from some others as well. There are better, other and more direct ways to do this to protect our planet.”

U.S. Senators making the news on climate change and clean energy.

Lamar Alexander (R-TN)

E&E News Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) challenged Democrats for pushing a climate bill that he said would pick winners and losers in the energy industry. “I wonder why we have a national windmill policy instead of a national clean energy policy,” said Alexander, himself an outspoken advocate for nuclear power.

WSJ So much talk about wind turbines exhausted the patience of Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, who again called for a nuclear solution to America’s energy woes. “Is nuclear power renewable energy?” he asked Mr. Doerr.

Kit Bond (R-MO)

Reuters “My fear is that what the recession and faulty management decisions did to the auto industry, the U.S. Congress will do intentionally to the rest of Midwest manufacturing—kill U.S. jobs and drive many of them overseas to China,” said Republican Senator Kit Bond of Missouri.

Barbara Boxer (D-CA)

Politico Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who faces an uphill fight in shepherding the bill through the Senate, says she appreciates all the attention from up the street. “It’s really been a pleasure for me, because last time I did this, I had an administration that was fighting me at every turn,” she said. “Here, I have a very supportive administration, so it’s a very nice change for us.”

E&E News “I think it’s very important we understand that the approach we’re taking, we don’t pick winners or losers. We put a cap on carbon and let the marketplace do it,” Boxer said. She highlighted the U.S. EPA analysis of the House bill that estimates it could lead to 260 new 1,000 megawatt nuclear plants by 2050. After Alexander called on President Obama to support his proposal for more nuclear plants, Boxer replied: “It is very clear he doesn’t have to support your proposal. His [support of the House bill] results in more nuclear power plants being built.” Boxer added after a hearing yesterday, “I think if you look at Waxman-Markey, the prediction is there being well over 100 nuke plants. I don’t know that we’ll need to have more than that. But we’ll certainly look at all of these issues.”

IB Times “When we unleash the American innovative spirit, we will drive economic growth and create jobs and create whole new industries here at home. American entrepreneurs will create jobs,” Chairman Barbara Boxer said. Boxer also said the Senate will do “more than protect consumers.” “You are going to hear some widely different views on how much is going to cost consumers,” Boxer told the panel. “But we have the modeling and we know what it is, we know what the Waxman-Markey bill shows,” Boxer added.

Talk Radio News “At the end of the day, our competitiveness in the world economy will depend on how we face the challenge of global warming,” said Sen. Boxer (D-Calif.)

From the Wonk Room’s Tom Kenworthy, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Farmers and those in the agriculture economy have a lot to lose if the trends in billion-dollar weather disasters continue – particularly when it comes to drought and water shortages, as recent news indicates. “Central and South Texas are in the midst of an epic drought that has sapped soils of their moisture, dried up stock ponds and turned cornfields from green to beige.” California’s “Central Valley farmers will receive an additional 100,000 acre-feet as part of a water loan to deal with the three-year drought plaguing the state.” As the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee begins hearing testimony this week on climate change legislation, “Billion Dollar U.S. Weather Disasters” – a catalog of 90 costly weather-related disasters dating back to 1980 assembled by the National Climatic Data Center – is a good place to start when considering the costs of inaction on global warming:

• In 2007, a severe drought with extreme heat across the Great Plains and the East brought some $5 billion in damages and costs. Wildfires in the West that same year cost more than $1 billion.
• In 2006, widespread drought affected the Great Plains, the south, and the far west, costing about $6 billion.
• In 2002, a broad drought cost $10 billion, affecting large parts of 30 states from the West to the Great Plains and much of the East. Western wildfires associated with the drought cost $2 billion.
• In 2000, a drought and heat wave centered on the south central and southeastern United States caused 140 deaths and cost $4 billion.
• In 1999, An eastern drought and heat wave brought “extensive agricultural losses” of more than $1 billion and cost 502 lives. *In 1998, “Very severe losses to agriculture and related industries” accompanied a drought affecting the central and eastern U.S. with estimated costs of $40 billion and 5,000 to 10,000 deaths.

The House’s narrow approval of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 on June 26 came only after House leaders satisfied some of the concerns of farm state lawmakers. Senators, too, will be sensitive to those interests, so it is critical they understand some of the stakes for agriculture if Congress fails to pass comprehensive clean-energy jobs and climate legislation.

Drought and changes in water supply will be one of the main challenges. Over the last half century, the recently released government report “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” says, droughts associated with rising temperatures have become more frequent in much of the Southeast and Western regions of the country. That trend is expected to continue. “In the future, droughts are likely to become more frequent and severe,” particularly in the Southwest, according to the report.

Water shortages will likely affect a whole range of critical economic sectors, from limiting electricity production by nuclear and coal-fired power plants that have high water demands to increasing shipping costs on the Great Lakes and Mississippi River – as happened in 1988 when a drought stranded 4,000 barges on America’s most important commercial waterway. Drier conditions in the West will also increase the extent and cost of wildfires, which have already soared in the last decade.

These events and their impacts are not abstractions. They are costly, disruptive, and affect millions of Americans, including many who make their living raising food and livestock. Few lobbyists for these interests will mention these costly impacts to our already challenged rural economies.

Senators have a responsibility to protect farmers from more and worse droughts even if the farmers’ hired guns won’t.

Read more at the Center for American Progress, and view a map of past and projected droughts at Science Progress.