Not 1 Question For USDA Nominee Perdue On His Whackdoodle Climate History
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Unfortunately, throughout Perdue’s entire testimony, not one Senator — Democratic or Republican — asked Perdue about climate change. Not one Senator asked Perdue whether his views from 2014 — where he railed against climate change as a cause of “the left” and “the mainstream media” — are views that would guide his decision-making process as head of an agency that is so intimately tied to both climate and the environment.
Some Senators did make oblique references to the environment generally. The problem of wildfires — an issue of special concern to the Forest Service, which is housed within the USDA — was raised more than once, with Perdue pledging to fight for more money for forest management rather than mere fire suppression. But not one Senator noted climate change’s role in fueling longer and more devastating fires — despite a 2015 report from the Forest Service itself pinpointing climate change as a major driver of more destructive, and expensive, wildfires.
With respect to environmental issues, Sen. Chris van Hollen (D-MD) sought assurance from Perdue that he would fight to keep the Chesapeake Bay Cleanup Program funded. Trump’s budget proposes zeroing-out all federal funding for the cleanup of the Chesapeake, a move that has fueled bipartisan criticism. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) also asked Perdue to pledge to support funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, another watershed cleanup program that would be eliminated under Trump’s proposed budget. Perdue pledged to defend both programs, noting their importance to the regions that they serve.
But much of the pollution problems in those areas come from agriculture. In the Chesapeake, an excess of chicken manure — fueled by the chicken industry on the Delmarva Peninsula — has lead to an overabundance of both nitrogen and phosphorus in the Chesapeake Bay. And in the Great Lakes, fertilizer runoff from farms has lead to toxic algal blooms, like the one that shutdown the water supply to the town of Toledo, Ohio, in 2014.
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https://thinkprogress.org/sonny-perdue-agriculture-no-climate-confirmation-234a4b5ed9c4#.5n7q1hvhl