Iowa Law Shields CAFOs, Ethanol Plants From Lawsuits Over GHG Emissions - Lawsuits That Do Not Exist
Aaron Lehman has many concerns about the fate of Iowa’s farmers. Climate lawsuits aren’t one. But state legislators don’t see eye-to-eye with Lehman, president of the Iowa Farmers Union. Instead, they’ve pushed through a bill that shields agricultural operations from lawsuits over the climate impacts of their greenhouse gas emissions. The bill now awaits Gov. Kim Reynolds’ signature.
State Rep. Derek Wulf, a farmer in Hudson, Iowa, introduced the legislation to protect farmers and ranchers from what he called “frivolous lawsuits” over “perceived greenhouse gases” during House debate in February. There’s little evidence that such climate lawsuits pose a real threat to farmers, in Iowa or elsewhere. In a subcommittee meeting on the bill, Rep. Wulf acknowledged there are no active lawsuits against Iowa farmers or ranchers specifically for climate impacts of greenhouse gas emissions.
In 2018, residents in Northeast Iowa announced plans to sue the Department of Natural Resources for failing to regulate air emissions from hog confinements, but they did not file the lawsuit. Even then, the challenge would have been directed at a state agency and not an individual pork producer. And while the New York Attorney General and the Environmental Working Group have sued major meat producers Tyson Foods and JBS USA, respectively, over their claims of reaching zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century, those cases argued that the companies had misled the public, not that their emissions had caused undue climate harm.
“We are not aware of any farmer or rancher who has been threatened by the types of legal challenges this law claims to protect them from,” wrote Lehman, of the Farmers Union, in an email to Inside Climate News.Instead, Lehman described the bill as a product of “cynical and short-sighted political forces” that undermine long-standing efforts to engage farmers in the fight against climate change.
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15042026/iowa-farm-emissions-bill-could-benefit-ethanol-plants/