Panel: Improving Our Agricultural Policies

Bert G. Kerstetter '66 Ethics and the Environment Lecture Series -- Speakers: Debbie Reed, DRD Associates; Tim Searchinger, Princeton University -- Both the United States and the world appear to be moving toward a cap and trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In New Zealand, where agriculture emits roughly half of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, there have been proposals to impose these caps on agriculture. In the U.S., bills have called instead for other regulated sources to be able to purchase greenhouse gas credits by paying agricultural interests to reduce their emissions. Fundamental questions of involving unregulated sources in a cap and trade scheme include: whether these reductions can be accurately measured, will they be permanent, how can a system assure these reductions are in addition to reductions that would occur anyway and how to account for the potential of some reduction efforts to trigger other emissions known as leakage. Meanwhile, a variety of world dialogues are going on by which large purchasers of agricultural products are beginning to commit or are contemplating imposing conditions on agricultural producers to meet their purchasing requirements, and some major food purchasers are imposing conditions of their own. This panel will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of these various strategies.

Location: McCormick Hall 101

Date/Time: 05/01/08 at 10:30 am - 05/01/08 at 12:00 pm

Category: Conferences & Lecture Series

Department: Princeton Environmental Institute (PEI)