Are Burping Cows Ruining Our Environment?
- Image by *~Laura~* via Flickr
In today’s Democrat and Chronicle is the following article:
Are belching cows the bad girls of greenhouse gas?
An Environmental Protection Agency document suggests the government consider controlling methane emissions from cows, with one possibility a $175-per-cow annual tax.
That idea didn’t set too well Tuesday with Donald G. Butler of Perry, Wyoming County, who said a tax on his 3,000 dairy cattle would put Sunny Knolls Farm out of business.
“We’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Butler said. His family has been on the land since 1820, and the farm currently supports his and his three sons’ families while employing 25 workers.
“It isn’t easy to start with, with the (milk) prices all dropping and he outlook for the economy, and then they’re proposing something like this. It’s kind of scary,” Butler said.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called the EPA idea absurd and said it could mean $120 million in new taxes for New York farmers, including $18 million in the Rochester-Finger Lakes region.
Only a couple of pages in the EPA’s 570-page rule-making notice ruminate about controlling the methane that cows belch or emit elsewhere when they digest grass and grain.
The document concedes that given the nature of the emissions, they may be close to impossible or financially prohibitive to control through current technology.”The only means of controlling such emissions would be through limiting production, which would result in decreased food supply and radical changes in human diets,” the EPA said.
Spokesman Dale Kemery denied that the agency is proposing a cow tax. He called the rules notice an “in-depth exploration of the opportunities and challenges that the application of (Clean Air Act) authorities would present.”
The American Farm Bureau and U.S. Department of Agriculture used EPA estimates on cow emissions, along with current air pollution fees on other industries, to estimate that the EPA’s rules could tax farmers $175 for each dairy cow and $87.50 for each head of beef cattle.
That “would be very, very bad for our farmers,” Schumer said during a conference call with reporters. “Now’s the time to nip this in the bud and wipe out any and all suggestions of a cow tax.”
The senator said he has written to the EPA calling on it to scrap any proposal to impose the tax.
This has to be the most outrageous thing I have ever heard of. That the EPA is considering a tax on cows that farmers would have to pay is mind boggling. If you do the math on what the farmer in the article would have to pay on his 3000 cows it would be $525,000 and that’s a lot of money. Cows have been around for quite a while raised and farmed as livestock and I doubt they are really the culprit here. Politicians need to stop inventing environmental hazards in order to raise capital for the government here in America. I know I don’t want to give up drinking milk, what would I eat with my cereal or oatmeal? I also enjoy the occasional steak, hamburger, and other forms of beef. This would not only hurt the farmers, but the consumers of beef products as well.
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The whole idea that cows could be an environmental hazard in and of themselves is bunk science. That's about equivalent to saying all the refrigerators in the world could cool down the Earth if you left the doors open. Could the cows impact the environment if their waste isn't disposed of properly, by dumping it in a river? Sure. But there's no way to claim that the particular NUMBER of cows is the problem here.
This whole tax is designed to shut down the small family farms that still remain so that all food production is transferred to the huge agribusinesses, which will use their political clout to avoid paying taxes anyway.
One thing that I have a hard time believing is that Chucky Schumer is really fighting for the farmers and the people here. If you ask me, he's just saving face. I've seen so many issues come down the line where he says one thing but votes another way. I'd be awfully suspicious seeing he has people from downstate to please, too. It helps them justify their filthy city to think that upstate's cows are hurting the environment more.
I actually know Don Butler. My father has a farm not far away from his. Wyoming County is the largest dairy county in the state and the State of NY is the third largest dairy producing state. A tax like this would cripple the economy of NY. We already have the highest taxes in the nation, this would just add to our misery.
What Constitutional right does the EPA have to tax anyone anyway? Isn't that taxation without representation, isn't that why the revolutionary war was fought, among other reasons?
Also, what if this was really all a plan by the democrats to create heros? They introduce the plan through the EPA and then have heros like Schumer and others beat it down so that they look good. Just something that I was thinking.
That's pretty much what I was getting at in my comment. Schumer is a huge sellout to the establishment (did he ever work for us?).
But Ethan, if we don't tax the productive side of the economy then how will we ever be able to prop up failing industries, fight other people's wars and subsidize exports to other countries? How!
hmmm, poor cows. They shouldn't have to get mixed up in this because Al Gore is out to get them with a vengeance after a bad experience with Taco Bell beef.
But seriously…how about we just put all the cows on one big government farm….
Wouldn't it be cheaper to but the cows some Beno?
Wouldn't it be cheaper to but the cows some Beno?
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