Texas Insider

Notes Perry, Staples Are Wrong On Global Warming

TYLER-Hank Gilbert, the Texas Democratic Party’s nominee for Agriculture Commissioner, on Thursday slammed Texas Governor Rick Perry for continuing to perpetuate the falsehood that the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse gases represent a public health threat will harm Texas agriculture.

“Controlling greenhouse gas emissions will not harm Texas agriculture. On the contrary, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and controlling global warming will actually benefit Texas agriculture,” Gilbert said.

Gilbert made his remarks in response to a letter Perry released today asking Congressional leaders to rescind a December 2009 EPA finding that greenhouse gasses are a threat to public health.

“Governor Perry and Commissioner Staples are both trying to perpetuate baseless, unsound, talking points in the hope that the myth will become truth,” Gilbert said. “The facts, however, speak for themselves.”
A 2009 report by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, program that coordinates and integrates federal research on environmental change for 13 federal agencies, concluded that changes caused by global warming would negatively impact agriculture. Its findings included noting that higher levels of warming would negatively affect growth and yield; extreme weather events are likely to reduce crop yields; forage quality in pastures and rangelands generally decline when carbon dioxide concentration increases; and that increased heat, disease, and weather extremes are likely to reduce livestock productivity.

“Texas farmers and ranchers can’t afford a governor and Agriculture Commissioner that are willing to ignore the facts about global warming,” Gilbert continued.

Last week, Staples called the EPA’s decision “unnecessary government meddling” in a blog post on the Texas Department of Agriculture’s official blog. He previously claimed the EPA decision will “drive the hard-working agriculture producers who provide us with the safest, most abundant food supply in the world out of business.”

“The reality is that agriculture stands to gain substantial new sources of income from efforts to reduce carbon load in the atmosphere. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has estimated that annual net returns to farmers will range from about $1 billion per year in 2015 through 2020 to almost $15 to $20 billion in 2040 through 2050,” Gilbert said.

“Todd Staples and Rick Perry are using agriculture as a patsy in the climate change battle. They are trying to inflame the agriculture community in order to distract from the fact that only real polluting industries will actually be penalized by legislation to reduce carbon load in the atmosphere. Agriculture will not be harmed. Staples and Perry realize that by using agribusiness as a patsy in this way, they can inflame more people and create a diversion,” Gilbert said.