CHICAGO (Reuters) — Cargill Inc. executive chairman Gregory Page said on Tuesday he would not commit to a carbon tax as one of the steps needed to adapt to damaging climate change but it was a “prescription” that agribusiness will have to evaluate.”
Page, part of a new group dubbed “Risky Business,” formed to encourage business leaders to address climate change, was asked in an interview if he agreed with former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, another Risky Business member, that the United States should impose a carbon tax to boost alternative energy use and reduce fossil fuel emissions.
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“I’m not going there,” Page said. “As a company we debate this a lot,” he added.
Paulson made his call for the carbon tax in an op-ed article in the New York Times on Sunday.
“Obviously, Hank has put down his chip that he’s in favor of pricing carbon and eliminating subsidies. That is one of the possible prescriptions,” Page said.
“We’ve watched different countries try different things. The one we’ve observed the most is just blunt force; mandates … haven’t worked particularly well,” Page said in an interview.
But the group’s main goal was to document the costs of not dealing with climate change rather than make prescriptions.
“We think the best discussion is going to take place if we get more people at least willing to consider what are the plausible scenarios that we might have to get ourselves prepared for,” Page said.
Privately held Cargill is the world’s largest agribusiness conglomerate, working with thousands of farmers on every continent. Its 2013 revenues of $136 billion would have ranked it 10th on the Fortune 500 list of largest public corporations.
Climate change and effects such as drought, floods and extreme temperatures affect agricultural production of crops and livestock.
Page, who stepped down as Cargill chief executive last year, acknowledged that doubt about climate change is widespread among U.S. farmers.
The first Risky Business climate report issued on Tuesday details shifting patterns of crop yields in coming decades, with “likely gains for Northern farmers offset by losses in the Midwest and South.”
Page noted that Cargill has been pushing climate change adaptation throughout its global organization, from using methane from its wastewater pools at meat plants to replace natural gas to changing its packaging, transportation and supply chain procedures.
