Harvard economist, Greg Mankiw, posted on his blog experts from an article on cows and their relation to global warming. It says:
"a cow will emit four tonnes of methane a year in burps and flatulence, compared with 2.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide for an average car."
Methane also traps more heat than CO2 does. According to Wikipedia, methane is 72 times worse than CO2. Ergo, a cow is nearly 100 times worse that a car.*
The solution that the E.U. has arrived at, is to tax cows. That way the producers and consumers of beef will have to pay for damage done to the environment. The tax that the E.U. arrived at was 80 euros per cow. At today's exchange rate, that is about $100. According to Beef Magazine, where I go for all my cow-related information, the price of a cow is around $1500 or about a 7% tax.
According to the E.U. beef farmers, who lose out with the tax, production will just move to South America. They are likely right, some production would shift to a place without a tax. I think, however, it would be simple enough to make sure all imported cows and beef products have the tax levied on them as well.
But relocating production is not the only way to avoid this tax. Since the tax is per cow, the simple solution is to breed even bigger cows and to pump them full of growth hormones. That's why I predict that Europe will be dominated by supercows within 10 years. Mark my words.
*According to Wikipedia, there are 96 million cows in the US and 229 million cars. Which suggests (if cows are 100 times worse than cars for global warming) that the focus of anti-global warming people shouldn't be the electric car, but rather the polite cow.
Great points, but greener cars also have the advantage of decreasing air pollution and our dependency on oil.
ReplyDeleteLet's plan take a vaca to Europe in 2019 to see these supercows.
ReplyDeleteAlyssa, I will take you to the mega-ranches of Europe and we will cower in terror and awe at the giant bovines.
ReplyDeleteJustin, I've been thinking about your comment greener cows versus greener cars. Crunching the numbers cows in the US emit 27648 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent while cars emit 618.3. A 1% reduction in the amount of cow emissions would have to be matched by a nearly 50% reduction in car emissions to be as big.
So, a small change in the amount of cows would actually have the same effect as a huge change in the amount of cars.
The dependency on oil issue is interesting though. If the US moved to a more electricity based energy plan and had cars that charged via connection to the grid, that might be interesting. Then we could diversify our engergy production to nuclear, coal, wind solar etc and so changes in oil prices wouldn't cause as serious fluctuations.