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WASHINGTON - With encouragement from Uncle Sam, smoke-stack businesses could pay farmers to grow crops that absorb air pollution, a panel of witnesses told a Senate committee Thursday.
Farmers' incomes would increase, and the country would have a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the experts said.
They said the program could be modeled after the system of allowing power companies to sell sulfur dioxide credits.
A company that produces less pollution is allowed to sell credits to a company that produces more pollution.
"We believe that an emissions trading program for carbon dioxide can bring similar benefits for combating global climate change that sulfur dioxide trading brought to combating acid rain," said Richard Sandor, chairman of Environmental Financial Products in Chicago.
For instance, a power plant that produces air pollution could buy emissions credits from a farmer who would grow trees or use no-till farming practices. Both absorb pollution, in the form of carbon dioxide, from the air.
To make the system work, Sandor said, the government would have to establish carbon dioxide emissions as a legally tradable commodity and a way to measure and monitor greenhouse gas reductions.
"Environmental trading can be a successful way of reducing the cost of environmental compliance," said Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the Agriculture Committee.
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