OK, not a bad slogan. Offsets may not be the enemy of the people after all.

Wouldn't composting be a good thing to incentivize as well if we're pushing hard to promote organic ag as a possible beneficial outcome of this bill?  Diverting food residuals and other organic wastes from landfills could lead to huge reductions in methane emisisons as well as provide nutrients and carbon sources for low input/high carbon agriculture.  Unfortunately, the current WM bill takes away offset opportunties for composting by forcing the EPA to regulate landfill methane emissions through "performance standards", and the Peterson/Waxman amendments today don't address this.

California is making the same mistake by 'regulating' landfill methane emissions through performance standards. Frankly, the landfill giants are just loving it, since it is likely to provide a crooked but plausible-sounding justification for sending more organics to the landfill, not less (to produce more methane to help pay for the increased gas collection costs and keep 'rate payer' prices down through already subsidized renwable energy generation...).  You will continue to hear the false argument that landfill gas collection is highly efficient and landfills will be formally rebranded as 'methane bioreactors'. Not good for composters or new anaerobic digestion technologies that can be much more efficient at methane reduction as well as capturing useful energy, both biological (compost) and chemical (methane).

Does the EPA really want this? How about we ask the group that pioneered the original landfill methane offset protocols for the EPA Climate Leaders Program (several years ago), or ask those who work for the Landfill Methane Outreach Program who have been actively anticipating and promoting environmental markets for years, or ask the Reduce, Reuse and Recycle folks in the EPA Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery, or even ask the really smart people in the EPA Office of Climate Change (they practically invented offset policy).  Is it a good idea for a few special interest groups to second-guess the EPA on whether offsets might actually be sound policy for this sector?

I think a lot more people, once they see through the trees, will understand that offset policy is what you make of it (and not necessarily the devil's weed); wouldn't it be funny if Monsanto, as a capped entity, ended up funding the widespread development of organic agriculture in the US through the purchase of offsets from organic farmers, as overseen and encouraged by an Obama administration run USDA?

Sounds pretty not-so-bad to me.

My personal "magic 8-ball" prediction is that ethanol won't pan out as the "miracle fuel" Big Ag thinks it'll be.

And by the time they can get their heads outta the corn-planted soils to realize it, cars will be much more fuel efficient and hopefully most will have at least some kinda hybrid system that will make very large-scale increases in ethanol production unlikely.