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Gov. Vilsack: The new carbon economy
10/17/2008

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/editorialcommentary/story/D87942C5BA351B7B862574E3007F4033?OpenDocument

The new carbon economy
By Thomas J. Vilsack
Thursday, Oct. 16 2008
Rural America faces unparalleled challenges in restoring our economy and rebuilding communities reeling from years of declining job opportunities and now the fallout from Wall Street's recent crisis.

As the country awaits a new administration to deliver change and restore hope in the American dream, rural America stands at the ready to take part in an emerging new economy. This economy is based on a product that everyone makes but that few so far have recognized for the powerful force it will become to bring back jobs and money to Main Street.

That product is carbon.

Let me explain:

In the recent vice-presidential debate, Gov. Sarah Palin and Sen. Joe Biden agreed on at least two points: that America needs to make more of its energy at home and that the climate is changing in ways that threaten our future.

These trend lines intersect around carbon. We release carbon dioxide and its climate-changing effects into the atmosphere with every ounce of increasingly precious fossil fuel we burn, most of it from foreign sources. We reduce that carbon load with each step towards homegrown renewable solar, wind, biofuels and geothermal power. In doing so, we leave more carbon locked up in the earth where it belongs.

Therein lies the opportunity for the American heartland. Amid the convergence of the high costs of foreign energy, climate change and economic crisis, rural America is positioned to seize this opportunity because we can make renewable energy on American farms and manage those farms in such a way as to lock up more carbon in the soil.

The engine of this new economy will be a new concept known as "carbon productivity" — the amount of GDP produced per unit of carbon emitted.

According to a recent study by the McKinsey Global Institute, carbon productivity must increase exponentially through a modern-day equivalent of the Industrial Revolution if we are going to overcome the challenge of climate change and achieve economic stability. Instead of a 10-fold increase in labor productivity as we achieved 150 years ago, today we must work towards a 10-fold increase in carbon productivity.

We need a "carbon revolution" and as the former governor of Iowa, I can say with confidence that rural America stands ready to lead.

Iowa is leading the way in decarbonizing energy sources by diversifying farm fields into energy fields. Our investment in cellulosic ethanol, biofuel production plants and wind farms has resulted in economic, environmental and energy security.

Additionally, Iowa experienced a resurgence in the manufacturing base required to support this growing carbon-efficient economy. And the demand for research and development has propelled our universities to the epicenter of innovation. Iowa is becoming to agricultural technology what Silicon Valley is to computers.

This is a model that can and must work across the heartland.

Meanwhile, 1,000 miles away in New York, 10 states covering New England and the Mid-Atlantic came together on September 29 to form the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. In short, RGGI creates a market similar to any other commodity exchange, except that it trades carbon credits, the same carbon credits that American farms can be producing.

In other words, by locking up carbon through clean technologies and generating less carbon through renewable energy sources, we create home-grown carbon credits direct from the family farm.

These credits then can be sold on the open market just as if they were soybeans or lean hogs. The result is the diversification of the average family farm portfolio, generating a new revenue stream and creating a new "cash crop" that just happens to help save the planet at the same time.

On a national level, job creation centered on a carbon-efficient economy and our quest for carbon productivity is estimated at upwards of 5 million new and better paying jobs. Under bold new leadership and with collaboration between state and federal governments, this transition can propel our economy, rather than hinder it.

Through innovation, we will preserve our heartland and ensure that our nation's farmland is productive for generations to come. We must not fear a transition to a low-carbon future. We must embrace it.

Thomas J. Vilsack, a Democrat, was the governor of Iowa from 1998 to 2006. He now serves Of Counsel in the Dorsey Trial group in Des Moines, Iowa, and is a resident fall fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

special to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch


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