New US office takes fresh approach to carbon

The Obama administration is off to a running start on climate change – pushing to let California and other states set tougher restrictions on greenhouse gases and accelerating higher gas mileage standards for cars and trucks.

But those are just the most obvious early moves reflecting a philosophy likely to be seen throughout the federal government, involving rural as well as urban areas. Already, first steps are being taken that will engage farmers, woodlot owners, and the federal land management agencies that oversee hundreds of millions of acres of public land – areas with the potential to “capture” considerable amounts of carbon dioxide that would otherwise escape into the atmosphere and accelerate warming of the planet.

Taking the lead here is a new bureaucratic mouthful called the “Office of Ecosystem Services and Markets.” It’s part of the US Department of Agriculture, which not only works with farmers and ranchers but also includes the US Forest Service and its 193 million acres.

Heading the new office is Sally Collins, a former Forest Service ranger who reports directly to new USDA head Tom Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa.

Ms. Collins believes the approaches of her office may open a new era in which urban industrial emitters of carbon dioxide will partner with private landowners to plant new forests or crops to soak up CO2, or in which revenues generated from a carbon tax will pay for planting trees in federal forests lost to wildfire.

The idea is to nurture food- and fiber-producing activities that are more climate-friendly. Over time, Collins says by phone from Washington, “Where we go from here will alter the discussion of how the country thinks about natural resources.”

The program will be similar to payments farmers currently receive to rest their land in order to preserve the soil, restoration of wetlands along rivers by municipalities to promote water quality and flood control,  and “biodiversity banks” in which landholders that affect habitat for endangered species are required to provide equal or greater amount of habitat elsewhere.

For now, the focus is on cataloging land-use activities that trap carbon and developing an acceptable standard for measuring them. The first step is setting up verifiable national standards – eco-bean counting for carbon sequestration as a 21st-century commodity crop.

Analysts, from free-marketeers to conservationists, find it an interesting – if not fascinating – idea.

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