A contingent of 27 Republican members of the House sent a letter, dated May 22, to President Joe Biden and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, calling on them to denounce comments that special climate envoy John Kerry made this month in a speech at a global climate summit held in Washington that focused on agriculture.
The legislators were coming to the aid of American farmers, whom they felt were unjustly attacked in the former secretary of state’s remarks.
Lead signatories of the letter are Mark Alford of Missouri—which trails only Texas in the category of states with the most farms (albeit by a 246,000-95,000 margin)—Committee on Agriculture Chairman Glenn Thompson (Pa.), Transportation Committee Chairman Sam Graves (Mo.), and Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa, which has the third most farms in the nation with 84,900.
Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa, held the position of secretary of agriculture throughout the Obama administration and was reappointed when Biden took office.
As the House members stated in the letter, Kerry’s speech, along with addresses that others delivered at the Agriculture Innovation Mission (AIM) for Climate Summit, was less about discussing “climate-related issues in agriculture” and more about an effort to “attack America’s hardworking farmers and ranchers and paint them as the sole scapegoat for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.”
The letter continued: “We strongly urge you to denounce Kerry’s remarks. These comments are a blatant slap in the face to the hardworking individuals that spend their lives sustainably producing our world’s food, fuel, and fiber.”
In Kerry’s speech at the AIM summit—in which he presented a litany of statistics and projections testifying to climate doom and potential disaster for humanity—he said that agriculture contributes, at the low end, to 26 percent, and at the high end, 33 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
The letter’s signers disagreed with the accuracy of the percentage that Kerry said agriculture contributes to total greenhouse emissions, placing the figure at 22 percent.
And, yet, even accepting 22 percent, the lawmakers contend that that number needs helpful context and perspective, not Kerry’s “alarmist narrative,” which they say misdirects and promotes misunderstanding.
“According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. agriculture industry is the lowest emitting economic sector in America,” the House members said in the letter.
“Furthermore, U.S. agriculture only represents 10 percent of U.S. GHG emissions, which translates to just 1.4 percent of 2019 global GHG emissions.
“In fact, the U.S. agriculture industry has achieved a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions since the 1980s, whereas other top producers, like China and Brazil, have increased emissions up to 86 percent over the same time.”
Kerry said that the agriculture industry needs major reworking.
“So here we are, 33 percent of emissions represented in this sort of gathering, and more ... because of transportation, because of heavy industry, because of all the components of the food chain,” said Kerry. “And we have our work cut out for us.
“As a consequence, this sector needs innovation now more than ever. We’re facing record malnutrition at a time when agriculture, more than any other sector, is suffering from the impacts of the climate crisis.
“And I refuse to call it climate change anymore. It’s not change; it’s a crisis. We’re beyond the concept of just change and we can manage the change.”
Kerry said that in some areas of the world, climate change has reduced the growth of agriculture production by 40 percent, even as the growing and raising of food contributes large amounts of greenhouse gasses.
However, the letter sent to Biden and Vilsack stated that U.S. farming is doing all right in producing food and acting as custodians of the environment.
“According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, U.S. agriculture would have needed nearly 100 million more acres of land 30 years ago to match today’s production levels,” the lawmakers wrote.
“Animal agriculture also continues to make advancements in nutrition, genetics and production practices that reduce their already minimal footprint.
“Cattle recycle carbon dioxide as part of their natural carbon cycle and the U.S. beef industry has reduced emissions by more than 4o percent between 1961 and 2018.”
Republicans have stepped up scrutiny of the Biden administration’s efforts to tackle climate change, saying that such moves jeopardize energy and national security.
In February, the GOP launched an inquiry into Kerry’s meetings and negotiations with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
And in April, Republicans threatened to issue a subpoena to force the Biden administration to turn over intelligence on those CCP discussions.
The Epoch Times has reached out to the State Department for comment.
