Yesterday, Senate Democrats unveiled a new report detailing how they plan to tackle climate change if they win control of the Senate in November. Here’s the scoop.
From the Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis,The Case for Climate Action: Building a Clean Economy for the American People is a 260-page report with a plan for tackling climate change and building the bioeconomy.
There’s a lot for the biotech industry to support in the report, including:
- Support for the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and Low-Carbon Fuel Standards (LCFS). “Advanced and cellulosic biofuels, coupled with carbon capture and storage technologies, have the potential to serve as alternatives to fossil fuels if we continue investing in their development,” they said (page 57 of the report).
- “Building soil health and storing carbon” by "supporting research and development that hones methods and easy-to-use tools for measuring stored carbon" and creating carbon markets to incentivize farmers and rangers to utilize new technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (page 110 of the report).
- “Growing the biobased economy” to “reduce emissions and bolster rural economies" by transitioning to “biobased fuels and chemicals that replace fossil fuel-based products” which emit fewer emissions and are less hazardous to human and environmental health (page 115 of the report).
Biotech has already developed the tools to support the implementation of these ideas—like clean, biobased fuels, chemicals, and plastic alternatives, technologies to sequester carbon in the soil, and innovations like gene editing to make crops more resilient, to name just a few.
But policy needs to catch up. BIO has long called for building on the success of the RFS to develop clean fuel standards nationally and in the states. We’ve also supported initiatives to boost farm conservation practices to improve soil health and store carbon, such as the Growing Climate Solutions Act, as well as policies to advance the bioeconomy.
During her recent speech at the DNC's Leaders of American Agriculture event,BIO’s Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath talked about why this is so important:
We’ve seen the connection between a lack of environmental justice and COVID mortality. We’ve watched people in underserved, polluted communities—who are more likely to have illnesses like asthma—succumb to these very respiratory illnesses upon which COVID preys. I joined BIO in June at the peak of the pandemic and at the peak of national protests about social and racial injustice. As BIO CEO, I will bring the perspective of a medical doctor and a researcher who has committed my life to science and public health. And as bad as this pandemic has been, it pales in comparison to what awaits us if we don’t take bold and drastic action to combat climate change.
Read the full report.
Want to learn more about biotech innovations to feed, fuel, and heal the planet? Register for BIO IMPACT Digital on September 21-22, 2020, our virtual education and partnering event for the global agriculture and environment biotech industry.
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