Death by Cow Gas
In another display of pitch-perfect priorities, the U.N. has released its findings on cow flatulence. ThereÂs quite a lot of it. The 400-page study, $27 million of which probably went to Saddam Hussein for old times sake, discovered that the planetÂs livestock, including 1.5 billion cattle, produce 18 percent of greenhouse gases. Apparently the beasts of the field do nothing but wander around all day asking their brethren to Âpull my hoof. Every time a cow feels a small sense of relief, a polar bear goes through the ice.
James Lileks
(From the Federalist)
There is a big stink erupted over the possibility of cow emissions contributing to Global Warming, and I fear I must take a deep breath and wade into this issue. Frankly something smells rotten, and not just in Denmark!
Actually, I was wondering how long it would take before some learned study came to this conclusion; liberals have hated the beef industry for far longer than they have ``known`` about Global Warming. Vegetarianism and the Vegan movement goes back a long way, and they have their roots in the nascent concepts of ``sustainability`` and white guilt at being able to feast on Porterhouse Steaks and Hamburgers while people in Africa might get two blades of grass and an expired cough drop for desert. Sprinkle in a hearty helping of bleeding heart (and anoxic brain) animal rights theory, and you have a liberal no-brainer (an oxymoron, I know).
I remember the early `80`s (before GW became the ``cause celeb```) campus liberals were all spouting off about our collective guilt at enjoying beef while people starved. Their argument was that it took four pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef, and that we should eat just one pound of grain and give the rest to the poor. Of course, this completely disregards basic economics, and ignores the real problems of hunger in the world; left wing socialist policies. Most hunger worldwide results from artificial conditions such as civil wars, despotism, atrocious fiscal and economic policy, and strife-all of which ultimately derive from liberal theories implemented in the newly independent nations in the `60`s. The drive toward de-Colonialization, the implementation of socialist or Keynesian economic theories, etc. produced much of the poverty we see worldwide today. Old wounds were opened between tribes, with nobody to stop the bloodshed once the Europeans were gone (at the insistence of the Left) and evil ideologies flourished, since those ideologies (Marxism et.al.) helped the local strongman justify and consolidate his power. State takeovers of businesses, of land, nationalizing the main industries destroyed economies throughout the Third World.
You cannot explain any of this to a liberal; he believes, in his purity of heart, that America and the West are eating up the future by breeding cattle, growing tobacco, manufacturing goods. THESE are the roots of poverty, hunger, and oppression (not the policies which they themselves advocated)and that these terrible things must be removed in the interest of ``fairness``. We must all live a simpler, more natural, poorer life where misery is equally spread.
That is at the root of liberal Puritanism; why the Left hates tobacco, for example; we should be growing food to give to the poor, not raising a noxious weed for our own frivolity! This is why they tend to support things which restrict alcohol consumption, and why they are so heavily on board with the ``health lobby``; they ultimately seek a transformation in our way of life to bring us to an agrarian Eden.
Back in the `80`s I spoke to a liberal from Brazil, and commented on her home country`s success at using sugar cane to produce fuel. She grew quite roth with me, demanding to know how we dare grow crops for fuel when people were starving. I pointed out that more food would be produced by mechanized farms, that the loss of productive farmland would be more than compensated by the extra acreage would could be cropped via tractor. I pointed out that much of the hunger in the world was a problem of distribution, that civil wars and tyrants would simply hijack any charitable donations for their armies (as they had done in Ethiopia during the great famine), and that spreading misery equally was hardly an optimal solution. She couldn`t answer any of these points, yet continued to assert her fundamental point that this was somehow immoral.
Which brings us back to boflatulencelance; I had a book from the 1960`s which discussed the matter! The Missouri Department of Fish and Wildlife has discussed this issue for years; cattle not only contribute to air pollution (if you will) but also cause great damage to stream beds and natural habitat. I`ve been waiting for the libs to link this to GW!
Of course, those cute little deer and other animals of which the liberals are so fond likewise contribute to GW; should we increase the hunting season? Somehow I suspect they wouldn`t like that answer to the problem.
No, we simply must regulate our beef production! Taxes! That is the answer! (Why is the answer to every problem involve more taxes with liberals?)
If we can regulate boflatulencelance, how long before hflatulencelance is regulated and taxed? How long before we are all fitted with a gas-o-meter to determine how much we are emitting for tax purposes? How long before our breathing is taxed?
What about India? They see the cow as a sacred creature; will they be forced to eliminate cattle for the sake of the environment?
This whole business has a bad smell.
James Lileks
(From the Federalist)
There is a big stink erupted over the possibility of cow emissions contributing to Global Warming, and I fear I must take a deep breath and wade into this issue. Frankly something smells rotten, and not just in Denmark!
Actually, I was wondering how long it would take before some learned study came to this conclusion; liberals have hated the beef industry for far longer than they have ``known`` about Global Warming. Vegetarianism and the Vegan movement goes back a long way, and they have their roots in the nascent concepts of ``sustainability`` and white guilt at being able to feast on Porterhouse Steaks and Hamburgers while people in Africa might get two blades of grass and an expired cough drop for desert. Sprinkle in a hearty helping of bleeding heart (and anoxic brain) animal rights theory, and you have a liberal no-brainer (an oxymoron, I know).
I remember the early `80`s (before GW became the ``cause celeb```) campus liberals were all spouting off about our collective guilt at enjoying beef while people starved. Their argument was that it took four pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef, and that we should eat just one pound of grain and give the rest to the poor. Of course, this completely disregards basic economics, and ignores the real problems of hunger in the world; left wing socialist policies. Most hunger worldwide results from artificial conditions such as civil wars, despotism, atrocious fiscal and economic policy, and strife-all of which ultimately derive from liberal theories implemented in the newly independent nations in the `60`s. The drive toward de-Colonialization, the implementation of socialist or Keynesian economic theories, etc. produced much of the poverty we see worldwide today. Old wounds were opened between tribes, with nobody to stop the bloodshed once the Europeans were gone (at the insistence of the Left) and evil ideologies flourished, since those ideologies (Marxism et.al.) helped the local strongman justify and consolidate his power. State takeovers of businesses, of land, nationalizing the main industries destroyed economies throughout the Third World.
You cannot explain any of this to a liberal; he believes, in his purity of heart, that America and the West are eating up the future by breeding cattle, growing tobacco, manufacturing goods. THESE are the roots of poverty, hunger, and oppression (not the policies which they themselves advocated)and that these terrible things must be removed in the interest of ``fairness``. We must all live a simpler, more natural, poorer life where misery is equally spread.
That is at the root of liberal Puritanism; why the Left hates tobacco, for example; we should be growing food to give to the poor, not raising a noxious weed for our own frivolity! This is why they tend to support things which restrict alcohol consumption, and why they are so heavily on board with the ``health lobby``; they ultimately seek a transformation in our way of life to bring us to an agrarian Eden.
Back in the `80`s I spoke to a liberal from Brazil, and commented on her home country`s success at using sugar cane to produce fuel. She grew quite roth with me, demanding to know how we dare grow crops for fuel when people were starving. I pointed out that more food would be produced by mechanized farms, that the loss of productive farmland would be more than compensated by the extra acreage would could be cropped via tractor. I pointed out that much of the hunger in the world was a problem of distribution, that civil wars and tyrants would simply hijack any charitable donations for their armies (as they had done in Ethiopia during the great famine), and that spreading misery equally was hardly an optimal solution. She couldn`t answer any of these points, yet continued to assert her fundamental point that this was somehow immoral.
Which brings us back to boflatulencelance; I had a book from the 1960`s which discussed the matter! The Missouri Department of Fish and Wildlife has discussed this issue for years; cattle not only contribute to air pollution (if you will) but also cause great damage to stream beds and natural habitat. I`ve been waiting for the libs to link this to GW!
Of course, those cute little deer and other animals of which the liberals are so fond likewise contribute to GW; should we increase the hunting season? Somehow I suspect they wouldn`t like that answer to the problem.
No, we simply must regulate our beef production! Taxes! That is the answer! (Why is the answer to every problem involve more taxes with liberals?)
If we can regulate boflatulencelance, how long before hflatulencelance is regulated and taxed? How long before we are all fitted with a gas-o-meter to determine how much we are emitting for tax purposes? How long before our breathing is taxed?
What about India? They see the cow as a sacred creature; will they be forced to eliminate cattle for the sake of the environment?
This whole business has a bad smell.
posted by Timothy Birdnow | 5:14 AM
6 Comments:
The Global Warming crowd will never "convince" me that it is anything but a natural cycle. If they can adequately explain how other periods of "global warming" prior to SUV's and heavy industrialization came to be then we'll talk (and there is this little thing called the Sun that they never care to address). In fact we should be glad for Global Warming! As you discussed in a previous post about the medieval warming period good things tend to come out it for mankind. I find it interesting that the positive effects such as far lower consumption of heating fuels, less need to "warm up" the car and so on are never factored in to the cost of global warming.
To the point of your piece today I think it is known fact that a little over a hundred years ago millions upon millions of large grazing animals roamed the great plains of America and the African savannas belching massive amounts of so-called greenhouse gasses and yet it is only human raised cattle that are just now causing the problem??? It's not even logical.
you might want to check a few facts in the future before going off on an ideological rant.
deer farts are not a global warming threat. first, there are far fewer deer and other large mammals in the world than there are cows, and the best way to reduce the number of cows would be to stop eating them so the market stopped producing them at artificially high rates. that's a far more efficient market solution than killing more wild animals.
but that's irrelevant anyway, because the only animals that produce dangerously high levels of methane are ruminants - sheep, camels, goats, cows. deer are not biologically equipped to be a threat. only the domesticated ruminants that humans produce on a massive scale are.
you also might want to check your history books. while you're basically right that conflict and not rich-world eating habits are responsible for the world's hunger, you're way off base in blaming that on whatever it is you mean by "socialism". certainly centrally-planned economies have caused famine, but so have markets and imperialism. the best example is india - only in the latter half of the 19th century, with the deep penetration of british control and free markets, did india begin to suffer catastrophic famine. after independence, no such famines have occurred.
you also seem to be under the illusion that after decolonization africa was free of western control and for that reason spiraled into conflict. pick up a book on congo (zaire) - one of the key reasons that congo remains the world's biggest basket case is the US-backed assassination of a capable leader and support for a horrific kleptocratic dictator, Mobutu. that same history was repeated around the world.
in many cases the "old wounds between tribes" you refer to were actually created by european imperialists seeking to impose their racial typologies in a way that could serve their desire to divide and rule. check out rwanda - before the europeans, the differences between hutus and tutsis were vague and fluid. after the belgians decided that the tutsis were racially superior, they assigned all rwandans to be either hutu or tutsi and made the tutsis the new ruling class. the resentments that built up over the years finally ended in genocide. we can hardly hold europeans solely responsible, but your idea that imperialism maintained peace in some sort of neutral way is simply bizarre. it did so through repression and by arbitrarily drawing boundaries (of both states and ethnicities) that became the center of these conflicts after independence.
Have you noticed that when ever the ever-present Anonymous posts anything the result is always babble? And ‘Anonymous’ always writes from the point of defense--never--a solid offense--because that would require facts.
Anonymous writes “deer farts are not a global warming threat.”
I say: Farting is farting. The composition of the gas expelled is generally universal--let’s think here people!
And then Anonymous goes on to say: “the best way to reduce the number of cows would be to stop eating them so the market stopped producing them at artificially high rates. that's a far more efficient market solution than killing more wild animals.”
I say: If a fart is a fart and deer farts are no global warming problem why stopping eating cattle--and it’s cattle--people don’t eat cows--cows are raised for producing mild--not beef.
Okay, I will stop here. Anonymous is waiting everyone’s time. If a person doesn’t know the difference between cows and cattle, he surely is unqualified in providing discourse on history, politics, let alone global warming fictions.
actually, i was wrong - altho not for the barely coherent reasons offered by william. there really is an important difference between ruminants and other animals - ruminants produce far more methane that others, so the distinction i drew was right.
what i was wrong about is that deer are also ruminants. so they, too, produce more methane than other animals. interestingly, they still seem to produce less methane than cows or sheep.
so the point still holds - deer are less dangerous than cows because there are far fewer of them and because they produce less methane. while reducing the total number of deer would reduce the problem of methane, the simple idea of opportunity cost tells us that the *best* way to address the problem is to stop eating beef.
william, if you feel too ignorant of colonial history to address the points i made, i will gladly accept your capitulation.
Great points all, Craig! I`d like the GW crowd to explain the warming on Mars and Pluto while they are at it!
I agree with you, William; bodily eliminations are just that, and a farting cow or a farting deer or a farting person is still passing gas.
In the spirit of the season, I was going to let you off the hook, anonymous, but since you insist on making a pest of yourself...
First, let me congratulate you on the courage you show by using your real name; I`m always impressed by what a large family you have, Anonymous!
Now, let`s get down to business. First, you might want to check a few facts yourself-at least you DID catch one of your mistakes! There`s hope after all.
The point is, the deer population has been growing for quite some time because of efforts by soft hearted and soft headed liberals who provide an increase in range and food. Deer will move into grazing territory now held by cattle, and their population will increase. There will be more grass, more feed for them. The only reason they produce less gas is that their numbers aren`t as high as they could be. You display a basic ignorance here; if you artificially create a vacuum something will move in to take it`s place. If people quit eating steak they`ll switch to pork, or lamb, or something which will still produce gas. Your solution is to restrict meat, which just isn`t going to happen-nor should it.
Of course, the actual point of all this goes right over your head; the whole concept you are so concerned with is ridiculous. Anthropogenic Global Warming is a scam, a grift engineered by leftists for a multiplicity of purposes; the creation of worldwide regulations, redistribution of wealth, social experimentation. In short, you guys want to use this b.s. to sneak Socialism in through the back door. Cow gas is just another card trick.
I would suggest, anonymouse, that you upgrade from your 6th grade public school history texts; you are in way over your head.
I would be interested in some facts and figures on India; and for you to cite your sources.
Of course, you fail completely to grasp the difference between free markets and colonial merchantilism. The British did NOT impose free trade on India, but a heavily regulated system of commerce centrally planned to benefit England. Merchantile economies functioned at the pleasure of government-not based on the wants and needs of the people.
Most famines are caused by drought, and the Bengal famine of 1770 was no exception. High taxes and regulation of the rice supply exacerbated the problem (yet these are things you liberals love). Also, 1770 was one of the minima for the Little Ice Age, which unquestionably effected rainfall.
It should be noted, by the way, that I did not, in any way, claim colonialism was purely beneficient; I said stupid liberals made things much worse.
How did the slave trade work in Africa, anonymous? Tribes raided their traditional enemies and sold captives to Arab middlemen, who then sold them to Europeans. Please note that the pipeline began with traditional enemies enslaving each-other.
Ever heard of Shaka? He was a bloodthirsty tyrant, and the Zulus were hated by other tribes in Southern Africa.
Africa was far from a paradise when Europeans came. These bloody wars are nothing new.
Of course, you show your hand by the crazy Lumumba business you bemoan. First, it has never been proven that the CIA had anything to do with Lumumba`s death. Second, the guy was a commie and the Congo was sliding into civil war thanks to him. Why did Katanga and Kasai seceed? Because Lumumba`s followers were pulling the country apart, that`s why! Your great admiration for Lumumba shows you for what you are.
How many African countries established free enterprise and Democratic governments after independence? Few. Most of them did exactly what liberals told them to do; they nationalized their industries, kicked foreigners out, and built a liberal utopia. Where did they get those ideas? Why was Rhodesia so economically successful, while Zimbabwe is a basket case?
You may want to study recent economic history; Central planning ruins everything it touches.
You are, of course, trying to steer the conversation away from the central point, which is that anyone who thinks cow flatulence is a dire emergency is an idiot.
We all know that anonymous is an idiot. Why else would he actually try to defend such a insane notion that any fart(not even my fat cousin Eddie's)could harm God's planet? Above all, please, would someone teach him how to use capitalization?
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