What Big Food has to worry about

Not a leftie, organic-arugala loving Obama administration, writes Tom Laskawy at Slate, but the constraints imposed by Mother Nature herself:

The one threat that Big Food hasn’t proven itself very adept at handling, however, is the multiheaded hydra of climate change, drought, and the shrinking supplies of various natural resources. The industry is not ignoring the political aspect of these threats. The farm lobby and its congressional allies were successful in excluding the agricultural sector from the climate bill currently before the House. Big Ag got exemptions for all its greenhouse gas emissions, which the EPA puts at 6 percent of total U.S. emissions (and which account for most of the country’s methane and nitrous oxide emissions, gases that have a far greater warming effect than carbon dioxide). And now, Rep. Collin Peterson, last seen ripping into the EPA for its recent ruling on how to measure the climate impact of corn ethanol, has threatened to derail the climate bill entirely unless he has the opportunity to rewrite it to Big Food’s liking.

If there are principled conservatives out there who actually acknowledge the existence of climate change and other environmental problems, this would seem to be a perfect issue for them: big government is subzidizing an environmentally-destructive, market-distorting industry to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars. And yet, you’re far more likely to read juvenille tirades against “elitist” proponents of sustainable food from most conservative outlets (with a few honorable exceptions).