The following action is from our climate advocacy allies at 350 Seattle:

HB 1574 offers grants for carbon sequestration and GHG emission reduction and sets up a committee to guide awards and inform farmers about the programs. The bill needs improving: funding for anaerobic digesters and for piping gas off site should be eliminated.

Please write an email to these 11 members of the House Agriculture & Natural Resources Committee by tomorrow. Ask them to amend the bill to exclude funding for anaerobic digesters and for piping gas off site

TO: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

SUBJECT: Improve HB 1574: Supporting WA agriculture by capturing methane and reducing greenhouse gases

RECOMMENDED EMAIL TEMPLATE

I have reservations about HB 1574. It needs improving before it can advance. Please exclude funding for anaerobic digesters and piping gas off site.

[INCLUDE 2 OR 3 TALKING POINTS from below, or feel free to write your own.]

[INCLUDE A RELATED PERSONAL fact, experience, belief, or feeling when possible.]

Sincerely,

[YOUR NAME]

[CITY]

TALKING POINTS

• While I support many provisions of this bill, the section which provides grants for the purchase of anaerobic digesters is likely to entrench and incentivize harmful factory farming practices and encourage the growth of increasingly large dairy operations. For further information see this article: https://www.iatp.org/true-or-false-climate-solutions
• Research by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) earlier this year confirmed that subsidies for factory farm gas gave major advantages to large dairies over smaller dairies, creating incentives to either consolidate production or add cows to existing dairies.
• This bill supports pumping factory farm gas through pipelines that put local communities at risk. Leakage from biogas facilities and pipelines is estimated to be up to 15% of total biogas production. Chronic pipeline leakages and ruptures are a major source of methane emissions.
• Around the country, rural communities have been fighting factory farms for the way they pollute the water and air where they are sited, lowering property values, undermining good health and quality of life, treating animals inhumanely, and threatening the economic viability of independent farmers. Funding for anaerobic digesters for such farms will cause their proliferation. That provision of this bill must be eliminated.

More climate actions from 350 Seattle