Diesel Bombers - Farmers Farmers READ ALL ABOUT IT! (COW TAX)

Well I didnt really like the EPA before, but now there just going a little bit over board if they pass this bill.

COW TAX!

The comment period for the Environmental Protection Agency’s exploration of greenhouse gas regulation ended last Friday, with farmers lobbying furiously against the notion of a “cow tax” on methane, a potent greenhouse gas emitted by livestock.

The New York Farm Bureau issued a statement last week (PDF) saying it feared that a tax could reach $175 per cow, $87.50 per head of beef cattle and upward of $20 for each hog.

Such a tax would represent a “massive hit on our industry here in New York,” said Peter Gregg, a spokesman for the farm bureau, in an interview.

“You could take all of our cows together and they probably wouldn’t have the same effect on the atmosphere than the average traffic jam on the Tappan Zee Bridge,” he added.

Farm officials from Texas to Alabama also sounded the alarm, and Mr. Gregg said that the response in New York among farmers was “almost a panic.”

The hysteria may be premature, however. The E.P.A. indeed issued an “advanced notice of proposed rulemaking” this summer that called for public comments on the idea of regulating greenhouse gas emissions from cars, as well as “stationary sources” — which, yes, would include cows and other livestock.

Comments are posted here.

The proposal is far from being enacted, however. As my colleague Felicity Barringer has reported, the E.P.A. administrator, Stephen Johnson, expressed concern about an “unprecedented expansion” in the agency’s authority that would accompany any effort to regulate greenhouse gases.

The farmers and the cowmen also have some highly placed defenders. The Department of Agriculture commented on the ease with which even small farms and ranches would run up against a proposed 100-ton limit on emissions:

Even very small agricultural operations would meet a 100-tons-per-year emissions threshold. For example, dairy facilities with over 25 cows, beef cattle operations of over 50 cattle, swine operations with over 200 hogs, and farms with over 500 acres of corn may need to get a … permit. It is neither efficient nor practical to require permitting and reporting of [greenhouse] emissions from farms of this size. Excluding only the 200,000 largest commercial farms, our agricultural landscape is comprised of 1.9 million farms with an average value of production of $25,589 on 271 acres. These operations simply could not bear the regulatory compliance costs that would be involved.

The idea of a cow tax aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions has been tried elsewhere — with similar reactions from the agricultural community. Plenty magazine notes, for example, that such taxes were proposed in New Zealand and Estonia, but were eventually shouted down.

But the E.P.A. may find new impetus for the idea with the arrival of a new administration that seems determined to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Methane has more than 20 times the heat-trapping potential of carbon dioxide, according to the E.P.A. (though it stays in the atmosphere for a shorter period).

Still, there is good news for farmers. Methane can be turned into electricity — called “cow power.”