Today my husband Dan and I ran errands together (it made more sense than traveling in separate vehicles). At the "Surge place" in Highgate Center, where sundry things in support of dairy farming can be acquired, he picked up a "Delvo Kit." This is a laboratory test that indicates if a sample of milk has antibiotics or dry cow treatment present, neither of which is supposed to be in milk, and either of which could ruin my day. I have to test each vat of milk (as required by the state) on the four times a month that I make cheese.
So, he comes back to the truck saying, "You won't believe what I just heard."
"The feds are charging $175 per cow for their methane output" (I'll omit the expletives).
"Can't be true!" I said, "I watch the news every morning and there was nothing (said) about it".
Apparently, I am tuning to the wrong channel. Sure enough, the Internet headlines read: "Toot Tax", "Flat-ulence Tax", "Cow Gas Tax", and "No Bull".
The Environmental Protection Agency had proposed a ruling to attach a fine to cattle and swine for farting and burping into the ozone - a fee so outrageous as to remove all profit from raising commodity animals: $87.50 per beef, $20 for hogs, $175 each for dairy cows.
Within 24 hours of that story breaking, the EPA released a statement saying that they weren't actually considering anything of the sort, and that the media had blown this all out of proportion. Apparently, there was some sort of "bull" going on after all.
I wondered. How much taxpayer money did the government throw at global warming only to come up with a half-baked fundraiser? Was it a higher priority to investigate the impact of cows and pigs "cutting one", rather than require motor vehicles to meet higher standards of fuel efficiency?
Every person contributes to damaging the planet in his or her own way; it can't be helped, but you can reduce your impact. Peer deeply into your own trashcan, my friend. Are there plastic/glass bottles and jars, Styrofoam containers and cups, tinfoil, cans, cardboard boxes, packaging, newsprint or magazines? All use fossil fuels to create them, move them, sell them, and take them away.
What's to be done? Recycle. Re-use. Buy in bulk. Sip from a travel mug. Purchase those fabric shopping bags for sale at the Hannaford; give them as gifts. Carpool. Farmers can't put corks in their cows, no matter what the Feds scheme to fine us for emissions. Porky and Elsie have far less impact on the environment than what we all threw away today.
Turns out that the issue was not worth getting our Carharts in a bind over, though for a while there, they did feel a bit too tight. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the EPA also proposes to charge individuals for carbon outputs - perhaps as a line item on tax forms. But then again, that would be completely preposterous. Wouldn't it?
