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Speaker 1: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. First, just for 10 seconds, time me. Thanks to everybody who's made a Giving Tuesday donation during the show today. That $20 match for any donation that anyone makes, no matter how small, remains in effect just for the rest of this hour. Thank you for your Giving Tuesday gifts at 888-376-WNYC, 888-376-9692, or at wnyc.org, and they will be matched with an extra $20 over whatever you give only this hour. Okay, that was 30 seconds.

Now our climate story of the week, which we do every Tuesday on the show. We talked last hour about two different divisions of the Justice Department and how they may change under a Trump administration. Getting much less attention is another of Trump's cabinet picks that he made in the last few days, and that's for agriculture secretary. He's chosen Brooke Rollins, a climate skeptic with ties to a pro-fossil fuel group, to lead that department. There's a quote in a recent story from Inside Climate News that lays out the stakes here. It says, "Farmers are on the front lines of the climate crisis."

Those are words of a concerned expert. The headline for that piece in Inside Climate News is "As American Farms Face More Drought, Storms and Flooding, a New Agriculture Secretary Will Have to Reckon With Climate Change." Joining me now is the reporter of that piece, Georgina Gustin, who covers agriculture and food systems for Inside Climate News. Hi, Georgina. Welcome to WNYC.

Speaker 2: Hi, Brian. Thank you.

Speaker 1: Since this is a New York radio station with, let's say, not a lot of farmers in the audience, would you remind me why agriculture is a big topic for climate change in the first place? Many people's minds may usually go right to cars and fracking and power plants and things like that. Remind us why is how we grow our food a big thing with respect to global warming.

Speaker 2: Yes, I think you're right. A lot of people think mostly of fossil fuels and energy production, but agriculture is actually a huge contributor to climate change. It's the biggest source of man-made methane, which is an especially potent greenhouse gas. It's also very much affected by climate change. It's a victim of climate change. American farms or farms all over the world are getting more and more battered by climate-induced extreme weather. That has repercussions for everyone, for everyone who eats. It's kind of a double whammy. Agriculture's got a huge impact on climate change and is also struggling with the impacts of climate change.

Speaker 1: We know who Trump's picks are for EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Secretary. We know some of the climate skepticism in those departments. What about the Agriculture Department? What does it do specifically on climate change?

Speaker 2: It has a lot of conservation programs, and particularly in the last four years under the Biden administration, it really ramped up a lot of funding for conservation programs and programs aimed at addressing climate change specifically. You might not think about the USDA as a climate-focused agency, but in fact, it has a huge impact on the way farmers go about their business. The new Ag Secretary is going to be in charge of an agency that has really, especially in the last decade or so, is really starting to play a central role in the whole climate crisis.

Speaker 1: You write exactly where Brooke Rollins, the nominee for Agriculture Secretary, stands on agricultural policy is unclear, but her positions on fossil fuels and climate change are explicit. That's a quote from your article. What are Rollins's publicly known positions about climate change?

Speaker 2: That's exactly right. We know very little about where she stands on agricultural policy, but she founded a group called the America First Policy Institute, which was basically considered Trump's administration in waiting and was really involved in the Trump transition. Of course, a lot of his anti-climate policies are being baked into his cabinet picks and in the way those agencies are going to be run going forward.

She was also part of a group called the Texas Public Policy Institute, which really went after solar and wind projects. She's been very explicit about her climate skepticism. Basically, she said that she doesn't think that that research into CO2 as a pollutant, into carbon dioxide as a pollutant is valid. She's made a lot of public statements that make her climate skepticism very clear.

Speaker 1: Does this also affect farmers detrimentally? I mean, nobody wants to be regulated in their industries. If certain farming practices contribute more to global warming, it may not be in the interest of farmers, or let's say agriculture companies, because so much of it is really done by big business to want to be regulated. Does it also hurt them if global warming continues apace? Are they victims of this as well as perpetrators, and that's another reason that it matters?

Speaker 2: Oh, for sure. I mean, last year in the US alone, there were 28 events, extreme weather events that cost American farmers $21 or $22 billion in losses. Yes, farmers are very much being hit by climate-induced weather extremes. This is really over the last eight years, since the first Trump administration, something that has changed in American farm country. They're really getting battered by climate change, but there's this dissonance between who farmers support and their realities on the ground. They voted for Trump in large measure, but Trump has famously called climate change a hoax.

They're getting battered by climate change, but they're supporting, for lack of a better term, an anti-climate-focused president. His cabinet picks are aligning with his worldview, and Brooke Rollins appears to be no different.

Speaker 1: I see, as everybody is asking when we do any segment like this on the transition, what can the Biden administration do in its last weeks? I see that in your story about this, you wrote, "So far, farms and farmers have received roughly $7 billion during Biden to help them implement climate-smart farming practices." Can you give us a quick example or two of that?

Speaker 2: Sure. That funding that you're referring to comes from the Inflation Reduction Act, which is a misnamed piece of legislation, but it was Biden's biggest climate-focused piece of legislation, the biggest ever. Farmers under the Inflation Reduction Act, about $20 billion was directed under the Inflation Reduction Act to farmers for implementing climate-smart practices. These are things like refraining from tilling or planting cover crops which help the soil trap carbon. There's this whole array of practices that are considered "climate-smart."

Under the Inflation Reduction Act, farmers in the country are set to get about $20 billion in funding for those practices. So far, about 7 billion has been directed to them. The remainder it's tbd because, obviously, the Biden administration is going to run out of time to distribute those. There's debate in Congress about where those funds are going to go and whether they're going to get rolled into other legislation. Generally, under the Biden administration, the last four years, farmers have gotten a lot of money for climate-smart practices.

This is an interesting situation because generally conservative-leaning farm state legislators, members of Congress, they really like that all that funding is going to their constituents and going to these farmers, and the farmers like it too. Unrolling that or winding it back is going to be difficult because while it's a very specifically climate-focused piece of legislation that Republicans and Conservatives were generally against, it's very popular in farm country and farm-state lawmakers and farmers have really embraced this particular piece of legislation and the funding that's come from it. It sort of remains to be seen how that's going to play out.

It used to be under the first Trump administration, anything that had the word climate in it was basically stripped out of the USDA, out of data, out of reports. A couple of research agencies were moved out of DC which had the effect of basically decimating those agencies. Over the last eight years, there's been this influx of funding for climate-smart practices. Farms have really gotten beaten up by extreme weather, so there's a little bit of a shift in farm country in the way their-- I think as one of my sources put it, their eyes have been open to climate change. I think that's very true.

Speaker 1: There we leave it, folks, for our climate story of the week, which, as many of you know, we've been doing every Tuesday on the show all this year, this time on one of the Trump nominees who's probably not getting as much attention as they should. Brooke Rollins, a climate skeptic, or climate denier maybe is a better word, with ties to a pro fossil fuel group, to lead the Agriculture Department. We thank Georgina Gustin, who covers agriculture and food systems for Inside Climate News, for drawing attention to that in her article, "As American Farms Face More Drought, Storms and Flooding, a New Agriculture Secretary Will Have to Reckon With Climate Change." Georgina, thank you so much.

Speaker 2: You're welcome.

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