extracted from weblog two hundred and fifty nine published on Saturday 16th September 2006
Across the Irish Sea, out in the country and down on the farm policymakers have discovered that Irish agriculture accounts for 29% of Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions…and that half of this emerges from the front and back ends of the animals which give us Irish Beef and Kerrygold Butter.
The Kyoto Protocol reckons that methane is twenty times as lethal as Carbon Dioxide. New Zealand has known this for quite a while...ever since local scientists calculated that the country's thirty million sheep and ten million cows were giving off thirty seven million tons of methane a year…more than any other part of the economy. How was it to meet it’s Kyoto Commitments?
A Flatulence Tax on the country’s sheep, cows and deer was the answer New Zealand’s Labour Government came up with. You couldn’t make it up. The idea was not to persuade the dumb beasts to hold back their wind but to delude the dumber politicians that the £14 million a year raised by the tax would be used to subsidise research into ways of getting the animals to give off rather less of the noxious gas sometime in the future.
The nationwide guffaw of incredulity was soon followed by a roar of protest from New Zealand’s 130 000 farmers who launched a Fight Against Ridiculous Tax…FART…campaign.
Polls showed that only 12% of the population were green enough to think the Fart Tax was anything other than a bad joke. On behalf of the 84% opposed to the tax, farmers blocked the streets of Wellington the capital with 200 tractors. One Member of Parliament even drove a tractor up the steps of the parliament building in protest…and earned himself a bossy reprimand on health and safety grounds from the country’s Prime Minister Helen Clark for his pains. A local newspaper gave out free baked beans to the demonstrators so they could make up for all the cows and sheep which could not be represented.
Up until now New Zealand’s farmers were best known for the fact that alone in the developed world they receive no government subsidies. Since these were abolished agriculture has become the fastest growing sector of the economy. New Zealand’s farmers are now so efficient they can transport their lamb and butter half way round the world to Britain and still compete on price with their lavishly-subsidised European Union counterparts.
But terrified that their country might get the reputation of being a bastion of the free market New Zealand’s politically correct Labour Party ministers seem determined to make their country the laughing stock of the farming world. At least Ireland hasn’t announced plans to do the same…yet.
But the really terrifying thought is that when the Department for Environment Farming and Rural Affairs works out that Britain has even more sheep and cattle than either of these countries the English might be commanded to save the planet by following New Zealand’s example.
Not that the Irish and the Kiwis are the only ones in trouble. Pity the poor Norwegians. Their national symbol is the moose and they are worried about the noble beast's propensity to burp and fart his way through the forest. Moose too produce a steamy heap of methane. According to calculations at Trondheim Technical University one moose lets fly with the equivalent of a couple of long-haul flights a year. And it's getting worse. Here's the science.
The planet warms up, the snows recedes, the moose eat more blueberries and make more baby moose, up goes the Norwegian methane count and down goes their Kyoto compliance. The ultimate perpetual motion machine.
So the next time David Cameron drives a husky sledge across Norway's Svalbard Peninsula he might think about shooting a passing moose. The perfect carbon offset for his photo-shoot. A shoot for a shoot. And think of the side-effects. Who wouldn't want a rugged hunting 'n shooting man as their next Prime Minister?
Read England's Climate & Energy Policy for background or visit my climate website for more on the politics of climate change.
16/11/07 @ 13:04