Fart Tax coming soon, and I am not pulling your leg (or finger!)

The Environmental Protection Agency is considering rules that could cost Colorado ranchers millions of dollars each year.

The agency is reviewing a Supreme Court decision that classified carbon dioxide and methane as air pollutants. While much of the ruling covered only the automobile industry, the final rules from the EPA could cover all industries — including cattle, pigs, sheep and horses.

...

Any rancher with more than 100 head of cattle could be charged between $80 and $100 a head for methane and carbon dioxide production. Colorado’s ranchers could pay $240 million in federal taxes. The cost to the dairy industry would be $20 million and pork producers would pay $17 million each year.

http://www.csbj.com/story.cfm?ID=20614

Before we had millions of cattle roaming the great plains, we had millions of buffalo, and long before that dinosaurs, all wandering around destroying the atmosphere untaxed! Where were these busy body bureaucrats back then? 

The real question is what is the goal of this tax? It is a punishment tax, so is the goal to punish farmers? Or is it to punish people who eat meat? How are they going to measure if the tax was a success? Will the government charge themselves for the herds of elk and buffalo in national parks? This whole idea seems really wacky, especially to those of us who are not convinced that global warming is a threat, or that it is man made. 

Even if you believe in man made global warming and believe that a sin tax on emissions is a good idea, can emissions from a cow or a pig be considered man made? Can someone who believes this tax is a good idea explain why? 

Comments

[lpcowboy]

I find this especially ironic since each racncher owns approximatley 10,000 acres of trees and grasses.

[Ross Levin]

The way cows are raised in feedlots causes a lot of methane emissions. They are fed grain, which they are not made to eat. They have evolved to eat grass. This causes more farting and therefore more methane emissions.

And these cows wouldn't be here if humans didn't raise them. Therefore the emissions wouldn't be there if humans weren't raising the cows, and the emissions are caused by humans.

[Jim Davidson]

Obviously not all cows are raised in feed lots. Many ranchers raise cattle on grass. This seems especially true of cattle ranches in Western states.

I find the claim that cattle evolved to eat grass and "are not made to eat" grains to be extraordinary. I wonder if Mr. Levin has any evidence that cattle don't have, say, teeth which accommodate the eating of grain. (Did they evolve, or were they made? I don't mind either way, but it is a sort of amusing contrast in what you wrote.) Don't cows have the ability to digest grains? Wouldn't cattle find grains growing wild in many parts of the world?

Wouldn't buffalo have found and consumed parts of wild grains in the vast prairies of the Old West?

The questions of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming are many and varied, and among them is the matter of whether or not the government is the best agency for funding studies to establish the direction and extent of climate change, whether the government is the best tool for use in managing resources, whether the government is even competent at allocating resources to meet a challenge of such magnitude, if it exists. These questions don't seem to come up for Mr. Levin, at least in his comment. But they come up for many of us who are called upon to pay taxes to address this manufactured crisis.

Let me state, then, my views. I think the government funded studies are largely suspect. Many problems with the data and the climate models have been found. Even Y2K errors were involved in some of the data sets. Global warming catastrophism has become a state established religion, in contravention of the First Amendment.

I well remember the news magazines of the 1970s which proclaimed a new era of global cooling to match the short term data of that period, and also blamed mankind. It was a high level of particulates in the atmosphere to blame for global cooling, and we had to have new laws to reduce particulate emissions.

In my view, the government agencies involved in monitoring, taxing, and regulating emissions do so for the benefit of the large corporations that seek barriers to entry from competitors. It is for the benefit of Ford and GM and Chrysler that the emissions control devices added to the Smart Car made its fuel efficiency a fraction of what it is in Europe. Indeed, where are the 60 mile per gallon automobiles that were available briefly in the late 1970s? Why aren't there VW Rabbit diesels available, along with dozens of competitors, making 60 mpg or better? Why, because the Big Three auto makers don't want to produce such things, or pay the royalties to the patent holders who invented such engines.

The government can never manage the economy to find a market clearing price. If price discovery is better left to a free market, how many other important things could be found faster, cheaper, and better, with a free market?

With the nationalist socialist scum who run the country, we may never know. When one contemplates the effusion of blood involved in resisting tyranny, it is hard not to be very sad.

In Somalia, since 1991, tax collectors have been very short lived. Somalis do not allow taxes to be collected. They simply kill the tax collectors. They also don't allow census takers to live, on the general principle that a census is meant to find things to tax. I wonder if America would be a better place to live if some features of Somali culture were adopted over here.

It is one thing to say that the tax collector is my neighbor and I should be nice. It is quite another to say that the tax collector should get to live when you consider the vast effusion of blood the war machine generates from those collected taxes.

[Ross Levin]

Jim, I don't know about wild buffalo but domestic cows have evolved to eat grass. They do have trouble digesting the grain and that's why they have the farting problems. It would be similar (although not exactly the same) to humans living on an all grass diet. We would have trouble because we're not ruminants.

Even if cows are raised on ranches before they go off to the feedlot (upwards of 85% of America's cows are raised this way), they are raised in a way that depletes the soil and causes emissions from their burping. Now, I'm not sure about the burping thing because I've only heard it once or twice and not from entirely reputable sources, but that's just what I've heard. There are different ways to raise cows, like management intensive grazing, that rebuild the soil, encourage forest growth, and are better for the health of the cows, even if they still produce some methane.

I think part of the idea behind this tax would also be to discourage excessive meat consumption, which is really rampant in this country. No one would be hurt if one or two beef meals were sacrificed a week by everyone in the country. In fact, it would do a great service to the environment.

As for the legitimacy of manmade global warming, I've got to trust the experts on this one. I am in no position to make an authoritative judgment on the matter. I don't know nearly enough, so I'm trusting the information that is out there.

[Jim Davidson]

It is delightful and amusing to me that you are eager for a tax to change my consumption of beef. Here’s an idea. Why don’t you eat what you like to eat, and leave me alone?

Or, here’s another thought. Why don’t you come to my home with your plans to force me to change my eating habits. Then I can kill you for your aggression against me, chop up your body, and ship it to your family members in pieces.

Your idea of using the government to change my eating habits is disgusting. Delegating aggression is not any less aggressive. It is just a lot more timid.

You trust the experts who tell you that there is global warming. Why don’t you also trust the experts who say that there is not? There is a diversity of opinion, much of it informed, on the topic. You seem determined to take up a position based on “information that is out there” which you choose based on your existing bias.

You might want to read the Satanic Gasses book by that guy from Cato.org. Or not.

Depletes the soil. Whose soil is it? The soil of the ranchers whose land is used to raise the cattle? Or is it your soil?

I think you should mind your own business.

[Severin Schneider]

Most cows are raised on pasture grass and hay, until they are close to slaughter and then they go to the feed lot where they are grain fed to fatten them up before slaughter, but almost no cows are grain fed for their whole lives. That is simply not cost effective. Cows only spend a few months of their lives in a feedlot.

[Doug]

I'm not going to get into the argument about whether or not cows produce methane. Or if there is or is not "global warming." But I will say this: If this "tax" were introduced, the only ONE thing would happen. Farmers would go out of business. There is absolutely no way a farmer can re-coup the money lost through this tax. The tax would account for more than they make in profit.

Consider that farmers have absolutely no say in how much they sell their beef/wheat/crops for. They can only hold it for a short time while the prices fluctuate.

My parents' farm, which is one of the most successful in their area (they've out-lasted 95% of the farmers in the 35 years they've been farming), has ~600 cows. ~$90 * 600 = $54000. In the 35 years that they've been farming, they've NEVER made that much profit. And their farm/ranch has been considered a "success" compared to most farmers in the area, with extremely tight expense control and very diligent and efficient work ethics. There is absolutely no way they could survive such a tax.

And to the dude that suggested that the government should force us to cut our meat intake... What about us on the low-end of the income spectrum that barely have enough money for that one steak every few months?

While eating very little meat may be healthy for you, you probably have an entirely different body type and metabolism than I do. You are also likely to be much less active than I am. I NEED the beef to maintain my health. The idea that you and the government should be allowed to regulate what I eat is a complete pile of bull shit. <-- Look! You're probably producing more methane than my entire herd!!

[zarxo]

It is to "suggest" producer foods rather than consumer foods. Blame your biological universities for this "mess."

In other words, we have over popluation and "they" cannot fix it, so the next best thing is to "tax" it. Makes sense right?

Allot of your ACORN followers are behind this type of thinking--green earth, no carbons (even though the Earth recycles it own carbons); most science texts imply that the Earth is a closed system with the sun, if so, then heat is a natural result of energy--no way around it. The scientists who know this answer refuse to speak up becuase of what--federal funding!

The independent parties are blamed for spreading theories while the liberals tax one. Yet the law clearly states that one cannot approbate and reprobate the same maxim.

[Poot-n-toot]

Hilarious, simply hilarious! This has to be a democrat brainstorm, it SO fits their transparant revenue scavenging.