The New York Times had a piece last week about changing the diet of cows to reduce their methane emissions. According to the article, the UN believes that livestock is one of the most serious threats to our global climate. By switching to this new diet a Vermont farm saw an 18 percent drop in methane output, and France has seen an even bigger 30 percent drop.
This is all great, but I was waiting for the catch. Phrases like, “They [the cows] are healthier,” “Their coats are shinier, and the breath is sweet,” prime me to think that going green in this case costs more.
However, there are cost savings! With the new diets cows are producing 10 percent more milk, live longer (produce more milk over their lifetime), and have better health (which I’ll assume means they are cheaper to maintain). What’s more, the new diet that incorporates flax seeds could be made even cheaper if a flax seed heating/processing plant were built here in the U.S.
This is an interesting development. Production could remain the same (or slightly increase) while decreasing emissions. Whereas, in Ireland and Denmark their efforts to decrease methane emissions are leading them to decreased production of beef and milk. Earlier in March of this year, Ireland proposed a 13 pound per animal cow tax (and Denmark was considering an 80 pound tax per cow). Considering the demand for beef and milk are expected to rise in the future the former seems like the better option.
Climate change skeptics on Capitol Hill are quietly watching a growing accumulation of global cooling science and other findings that could signal that the science behind global warming may still be too shaky to warrant cap-and-trade legislation… More than 31,000 scientists across the world have signed the Global Warming Petition Project, a declaration started by a group of American scientists that states man’s impact on climate change can’t be reasonably proven.
Dear Editor: As a scientist and life-long liberal Democrat, I find the constant regurgitation of the anecdotal, fear mongering clap-trap about human-caused global warming (the Levi, Borgerson article of 9/24/08) to be a disservice to science, to your readers, and to the quality of the political dialogue leading up to the election… The global warming alarmists don’t even bother with data! All they have are half-baked computer models that are totally out of touch with reality and have already been proven to be false.
With all the election craziness, we might have forgotten that GWB is unfortunately still in office. Given that he has just a few months left before his Presidency ends, there is a final push to demolish most, if not all government functions, particularly with respect to regulations.
As the U.S. presidential candidates sprint toward the finish line, the Bush administration is also sprinting to enact environmental policy changes before leaving power. Whether it’s getting wolves off the Endangered Species List, allowing power plants to operate near national parks, loosening regulations for factory farm waste or making it easier for mountaintop coal-mining operations, these proposed changes have found little favor with environmental groups.
Really, endangered wolves are sooo overrated. Yay for deregulation!
Also, if this weren’t enough, Australian politicians are demanding an investigation into a leak of a private phone call between Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and GWB. The phone call is receiving a great deal of attention because the contents reveal that Bush asked Rudd what the G20 forum was. This comes after 8 years in the White House, numerous visits with foreign leaders and regular attendance at similar global summits. Sigh. January couldn’t come sooner.
Democrats have a tough job. When you don’t stand for anything, you have to pretend to stand for everything.
They say they stand for jobs. But, they also stand for the environment, so why would they want to open any new jobs in offshore drilling or clean coal?
They don’t want to outsource jobs… But, they don’t want to give corporations tax breaks for keeping jobs home. Instead, the US has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world, and Obama wants to raise it. Then ask companies to keep jobs in America.
Obama has run into these contradictions throughout his campaign.
He supports a health care plan that mandates employers cover their workers with fines that Harvard economist Katherine Baicker projects will result in the loss of over 200,000 jobs.
(Obama hasn’t even come to a decision on who or how much he will fine: “We made a decision even before the plan was rolled out not to decide,” said David M. Cutler, a Harvard economist who speaks for the campaign on health care. “It’s not that there’s a decision out there that we’re not telling. It’s literally that we’ve decided not to decide.”)
He supports caps on the amount of oh-so-devastating and poisonous carbon used for energy. He says his plan will bankrupt coal plants.
Coal mining accounts for over 82,000 jobs and coal power accounts for over 60,000 jobs. (Coal jobs) The states that have already been losing a lot of jobs over the past few decades–states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Michigan–will also be some of the hardest hit when Obama bankrupts coal plants.
Do the voters in these battleground states care about their jobs? They should.
The New York Times just published an article about how people across America are adapting to the high gas prices. Though one woman outside Chicago reportedly had to take on a second job in order to make ends meet, some of the other approximately 70 Americans interviewed found other ways of coping with the problem…FUN ways.
For example, a Los Angeles couple told reporters that they were adjusting to the gas prices by spending “more time at home on weekends, hanging out and barbecuing.” They also said that they now do all their chores at once, together instead of taking separate trips. Sounds like fun to me! Looks like the gas prices have brought this couple closer together. How sweet, right?!
Another guy they interviewed from California said he recently sold his car in lieu of a brand new motorcycle, which will apparently cut his weekly gas bill down from $110 to just $8! Could it be? I think the gas crisis has actually cured the so common “mid-life crisis” that plagues our husbands and fathers. Now they all have a good reason to go out and buy the motorcycle they have always wanted and have fun! That’s pretty awesome.
Additionally, one can only imagine what the high gas prices are doing to combat the obesity problem in America. Stumped? Here is a fun little video I found to help drive my point home:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlQOmO44_bA
Or…at least there will definitely be more walking involved.
There’s no better way to start the morning than with a nice, warm mug of rat’s milk. It’s delicious, nutritious and green. No, not literally green in color – at least if it’s fresh. But by switching from cow’s milk to rat’s milk, you – yes you! – can save the planet from environmental destruction. This nugget of wisdom comes from Heather Mills, former model soon-to-be ex-wife of Paul McCartney and certified environmental wacko.
Heather Mills poses with her Starbucks latte,
which we can only assume must be made with organic,
shade-grown coffee and rat’s milk. After all, we’d never expect environmental
activists to tell people to alter their lifestyles in ways that they themselves do not.
June 6th, 2009 by 
DJ
