PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • July 31, 2023
Farming of all sorts contributes to and suffers from climate change, but there is a lot that we can do to reverse that. Three sections of the Inflation Reduction Act provided billions of dollars over 10 years to the USDA to help farmers sequester CO2, destroy or convert methane and remove other greenhouse gases. Wouldn’t it make sense to require companies or farms benefiting from subsidies or price supports use that assistance to remove and reduce greenhouse gases? Or to pay a fee based on the greenhouse gases they do not eliminate? The Farm Bill could require that the administration impose, with a year’s notice, tariffs that could be used to fund low-interest loans for deep net negative greenhouse-gas removal, not just net-neutral offsets. ~ John Fitzgerald, Sedgwick