Mother Jones reported today that Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack's son works for an ethanol pipeline project, Summit Carbon Solutions. Tom Philpott has the story:
To reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the nation’s agribusinesses and farms, US Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack favors a “market-oriented, incentive-based, voluntary” approach—one that wields the carrot of government largess, not the the stick of regulation. In November, his son, veteran corporate lawyer Jess Vilsack, took a job with an Iowa outfit that could cash in from such a suite of policies.
The company, Summit Agricultural Group, has recently launched a private equity arm with a bold and controversial plan to build a $4.5 million, 2,000-mile pipeline to capture carbon dioxide emitted by 31 corn ethanol plants in the Midwest and bury it underground in North Dakota.
Jess Vilsack now serves as the general counsel of the venture, which is called Summit Carbon Solutions. Its planned pipeline, dubbed the “Midwest Carbon Express,” would count as the “world’s largest carbon capture and storage project when complete,” the company’s website states. So far, the project has drawn investment from venture capital firm Tiger Infrastructure Partners and farm-equipment giant John Deere, Bloomberg Law reports. It will rely on ethanol-friendly policies that Jess’s father has been advocating for his entire political career, from his stint as Iowa governor in the 2000s through his terms as agriculture secretary under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
This is not acceptable.
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