After all the eating, drinking and merriment for the holidays, I thought this article in The Week was most appropriate in one aspect, but it really emphasises the absurdity of some government agencies:
Cow flatulence: Will it be taxed?
There’s a wind of change blowing from Washington, D.C., these days, said Richard Luscombe in the London Guardian, and many farmers don’t like how it smells. They’re in an uproar over a recent Environmental Protection Agency report that included the suggestion that the government should consider taxes on businesses that emit globe-warming greenhouse gases—including farms with "belching and flatulent cattle and pigs." It’s less crazy than it sounds, said the Chattanooga, Tenn., Times Free Press in an editorial. Counting both its ends, the average cow pumps some 500 liters of methane into the atmosphere every day. So any such "gas tax" could be significant, up to $175 per dairy cow annually. "Everyone’s against air pollution," of course. The problem is that fees like that would have a silent but deadly effect on U.S. agriculture.
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