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Lifestyles Left and Right
A UN-Approved Christmas Dinner
First they came for our SUV’s. Now they’re coming for the meat on our plate and in our freezer.
The year-end news isn’t pretty. The dictatorship-dominated United Nations has its eye on our Christmas hams as a key source of allegedly man-made global warming and planetary suicide.
“We haven’t come to grips with agricultural emissions,” warned Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in a front page article in the New York Times on December 4, “From Hoof to Plate, a New Bid to Cut Emissions.”
Before he gets the UN to go after the belching and flatulence of hogs, you’d think Dr. Pachauri would make sure that global warming is actually occurring, and that if it is, that it’s in fact man-made, or pig-made, and not just due to solar activity or natural cycles.
The Associated Press reports that “2008 is on a pace to be a slightly cooler year” than last year. On December 11, the palm trees were snow-covered in New Orleans in the earliest snowfall ever recorded in the city’s history. Enjoying a rare blizzard on the Outer Banks, kids were building snowmen on the beach a week before Thanksgiving. “Alaskan glaciers grew this year instead of retreating,” reported Investor’s Business Daily on December 15, while “Fairbanks had its fourth coldest October in 104 years of records,” and “the temperature at Denver International Airport dropped to 18-below-zero on December 14, breaking the previous record of 14-below set in 1901.”
Still, environmental ministers from 187 nations gathered in Poland this month to talk about a new treaty to fight global warming in a conference that was scheduled prior to the snowball fights on Bourbon Street.
Farm flatulence and belching will be “one of the main issues” on the agenda in Poland, reported the New York Times, explaining that “the trillions of farm animals around the world generate 18 percent of the emissions that are raising global temperatures, according to United Nations estimates, more than from cars, buses and airplanes.”
Going into this year’s Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season, the USDA reported that frozen ham stocks in the U.S. totaled 160.5 million pounds, only about 2.2 million pounds below the record high pre-holiday figure for that date of 162.66 million pounds.
To control our carbon footprint, says Dr. Pachauri, we should “reduce meat consumption.” A good world-saving lunch would be an internationally sanctioned broccoli burger, minus the cheese, unless we can find some zero-emitting heifers or develop some kind of methane-capturing cow diapers.
In a “Raise a Stink” campaign earlier this year, farmers in New Zealand mailed reeking parcels of sheep and cow manure to members of Parliament to protest a proposed flatulence tax. The new levy is designed to empty tens of millions of dollars from the pockets of farmers, raise meat prices, meet the government’s commitments under the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, and pay for research into methane gas emissions from agricultural animals. The nation’s postal service complained that the campaign was a threat to the physical and mental health of postal workers.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, New Zealand is required to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. “According to government figures, New Zealand’s 45 million sheep and cattle burped and farted about 90 percent of the country’s methane emissions,” reports London’s Telegraph.
Next year, Sweden is launching a green labeling program for food, so consumers can readily see that a turkey is allegedly better than a pig for keeping the ocean levels down, and that carrots are even better. “Producing a pound of beef creates 11 times as much greenhouse gas emissions as a pound of chicken and 100 times more than a pound of carrots, according to Lantmannen,” a Swedish environmental group, reports the Times.
The perfectly correct Christmas dinner? A carrot soufflé, minus the eggs, and a “sin tax” on any fuel-burning side dishes that traveled more than 100 miles.
Or maybe a big stuffed kangaroo on the Christmas table would please the warming zealots. “It’s been long known that kangaroos don’t produce methane,” explained George Wilson of the Australian Wildlife Service recently in the New York Times. If Australia’s current kangaroo population of 35 million was managed up to 175 million, and if 42 million sheep and cattle could simultaneously be removed, Wilson calculates that the country could cut 16 megatons of greenhouse gas emissions, 3 percent of nation’s total.
About the Author
Ralph R. Reiland is the B. Kenneth Simon professor of free enterprise and an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (27) | Leave a comment
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Melvin| 12.23.08 @ 7:21AM
This bureaucratic flatulence that is emanating from government and the UN will eventually change. Farmers will go out of business rather than be taxed to death and guess what will replace the carrot souffle? Food Shortages=Food Riots.
Rocco| 12.23.08 @ 7:23AM
Melvin, I heartily agree. And the sooner the better. Either tar and feather these jerks and run them out of here or run up the hangman's nooses. I for one am damned sick and tired of this nonsense.
Mack Skiba| 12.23.08 @ 7:36AM
This article is just as biased as the stupid UN global warming reports. Yes this year has been cooler than previous years but that doesn't mean shit. Truth is we don't know if this is a regular cycle that occurs on earth or its really man-made. If someone argues one way or another they are a fucking idiot and have a hidden agenda. The issue is to complex for us to be able to tell you one way or another. Its more of a guessing game in the end and going with your gut feeling. However I will say this, better safe than sorry.
Don Werenko| 12.23.08 @ 9:22AM
I don't get on this website to read comments by foul-mouthed people like Mack Skiba who can not express themselves without cursing. The article is not only very funny but is truthful. Liberals like Skiba will never, ever understand what is being done to our world in the pretext of 'saving it'.
Nigel Fartworthy| 12.23.08 @ 9:49AM
I love article's about farting! Nothing like a good trouser sneeze to get you going!
Louis Jenkins| 12.23.08 @ 9:51AM
Once again the US hating UN tackles the soft under sowbelly of America.
Item #A- Global warming, while considered questionable, is now an accepted religious movement. America is affluent, make them pay for it.
Item # B- Americans eat a great deal of meat so make it more expensive in whatever way possible, make them pay for it.
Item #C- The poor nations of the world need greater aid and assistance, and livestock consumes grain and fodder. The US needs send more charitable foodstuffs overseas. Make America pay for its dietary sins.
Item # D- The UN sits on American soil and part of the operational budget is paid for by America, so, make the US pay more for that too.
Item # E- What do you call a bus load of UN representatives going over a cliff? A good start! Why not just bulldoze the UN into the ocean and be done with it? According to world opinion the US is to blame for all the world's problems anyway.
Stu Pidaso| 12.23.08 @ 10:01AM
If you believe my lovely wife, I am about 50% of our methane emissions............ my Dutch Oven kills her!
Marc Jeric| 12.23.08 @ 10:32AM
Globaloney cooling scam of the 1970's did not work, so it was replaced by globaloney warming hoax of the 1990's. After 10 years of significant cooling we have now "climate change" flim-flam. In this manner no matter what happens with the climate in the future, our socialists and revolutionary marxists have the means to impose their "social justice" on us all.
Crusader| 12.23.08 @ 10:34AM
Stuff like this would be funny if it weren't true. I have this vision sometimes where it is 200 years into the future and through the blood of patriots and tyrants alike America is back to being a Constitutional Republic, with strict limits on our fed gubmint. Historians of the time read newspapers from the early 21st century and are laughing their a$$es off! I mean, who believes this stuff? A cow fart tax? Why aren't heads rolling in NZ?
Scott| 12.23.08 @ 11:59AM
I am cooking a 15 pound standing rib roast for Christmas dinner. I am burning three boxes of firewood as well.
Gorebal Worming be damned.
Jon Fraud Carry| 12.23.08 @ 12:28PM
The UN thinks that something offensive to Muslims is also causing Gullible Warming? So eating Bacon for breakfast would be the PissOff Triple Header. I can smell it now!
Martin Owens| 12.23.08 @ 12:55PM
Want to keep your burgers? Keep your guns.
Nick in Virginia| 12.23.08 @ 1:11PM
Mack must not have read the reports that say the last TEN YEARS have been a general cooling trend, and that the global temperature is now the same as it was in 1980. TEN YEARS of cooling shows more of a trend than one year, Mack. Time to go buy some sweaters.
According to the Global Warming theorists, the global temperature should be steadily increasing, but obviously it isn't. If I say I am going to run water into a bucket, and predict it will steadily fill up and then overflow, but it doesn't do that, I would have to check to see if my bucket had a hole in it.
The global warming crowd hasn't yet checked to see if their bucket has a hole in it. When they find the hole, they will probably say that global warming caused the bucket to melt, making the hole, and we are still in danger of roasting to death.
Karin| 12.23.08 @ 2:51PM
I've been doing some research into this very old house I purchased. I came across a diary written 150 years ago by a girl in my town. She recorded the temperatures each day. Guess what? They're the same exact temperatures as I'm seeing today. Zero, 5, 15 , 8 and the like.
Old Sailor Man| 12.23.08 @ 4:04PM
For CRUSADER...the Kiwis threw out their socialist government a couple of months back, brought in a Centre Right government
Wicked Dickie| 12.23.08 @ 5:07PM
One shouldn't be startled by the belief in Globaloney when one contemplates the results of the presidential election. Remember the voter quiz which revealed just how misinformed Dem voters are? Louie posited getting rid of that New York City chancre called the UN. I'm for that as we certainly could do without such a large concentration of fecal craniums extolling the dubious virtue of being safe rather than sorry as well as other goofy and expensive ideas. (Especially when it's on my dime.) (My apologies to Don). Love that comment from Martin about burgers and guns.
E.M.Smith| 12.23.08 @ 8:21PM
Someone needs to point out to these folks that those animal emissions came from plants that took it from the air as CO2. It's a cyclical thing... no added gasses.
And if the plants were not farmed? The native vegetation would reach an equilibrium with the ground litter where the same stuff would be fermented into... CO2 and Methane...
There is no increase in greenhouse gasses here, even IF greenhouse gases mattered.
Sidebar: Particulates have been shown to cause cooling. So we could 'fix' the whole thing by simply putting sulphur back into the fuel of high flying aircraft. (Use low sulphur for take off / landing - they have multiple tanks - so no smog). But I wouldn't do that now. The sun has gone cool and we're having record cold...
This could even be thought of as a 'green' solution since it's less sulphate than a good volcano puts out and they are natural...
WilliamInWien| 12.23.08 @ 8:28PM
I was employed by a UN agency on New Years eve, 1999, as we were faced with the Milenium Bug. Oh, those nuclear reactors would go critical, so a 24 hour watch was stood up to insure a timely response! When New Years had come and past without incident, the champagne came out! In the UN, there is no crtical thinking, whatever is in vogue is not disputed and if you disagree with the current popular dogma, you will eat lunch alone! And, there are times when profanity is in order to bring home a point. This is not one, Mack!
Madoff| 12.23.08 @ 9:38PM
Google 9/11 New World order plan: Europe, America vs Russia, China.
What has Mossad got in store for you in the new year?.
Jim| 12.23.08 @ 10:20PM
Move the UN HQ to Zimbabwe, now!
Dave Fobare| 12.24.08 @ 12:41AM
Pachauri appears to be a Hindu of the militant sort pining to impose his strict vegetarianism on the rest of the world in the name of environmentalism:
http://blog.rkpachauri.org/blog/4/Lifestyle-Changes-for-A-Healthy-Planet.htm
Dietary imperialist!
S.K.| 12.24.08 @ 11:17AM
The way meat is produced in our country is inhumane, unsanitary, and horrible for the earth and for our bodies, but right now we as a nation have bigger fish to fry. Buy organic if you can afford it, I say, but don't if you can't, and maybe we'll focus on the cows and sows after we take care of the 1000 other frightening challenges facing us as a nation.
And on the global warming thing--Thanks, Ralph, for telling me the temperature is the same. Your common-sense conclusions on global warming are clearly way more valid than those by hundreds if not thousands of independent scientists and research teams with in-depth data and the training to properly interpret it.
The way I see it, you and I have NO IDEA if global warming is real. The only way we'll know is if we live to be 300. But I say, better to trust the scientists and try and have our way of life a little cleaner than to come to my own conclusions based on little info and less understanding. Better to be safe than sorry.
...once we can actually manage it, of course.
Michael L. Hauschild| 12.25.08 @ 7:33PM
Kangaroo as the Christmas goose makes sense. The recipe for kangaroo tail is simple: Cut tail into two-inch sections; stew for ten years (or longer you want it tender). The drawback is that by the time the first batch is done we will all have frozen to death.
dgdc| 12.25.08 @ 8:42PM
Although some might enjoy animal flatulence it is an inefficiency. Methane carries away energy that could be used by ruminants if the digestive system were tweaked. By studying and copying the system of the kangaroo, which does not release significant methane because the energy is recaptured, the farmer can reduce the feed requirements.
Environmentalists and efficiency are usually more in sync than not.
Michael L. Hauschild| 12.26.08 @ 9:52AM
From: Environmental Protection Agency
To: F. Brown
It has been brought to our attention by an unrealistic lunatic blogger posting at American Spectator that Australian marsupials produce less flatulence than your bovine herd. (We suspect he has inhaled too much of these emissions doing his research) However, despite the fact that these species are totally biologically divergent, our new “green” policy mandates that you will climb off your tractor run out to the shed and overcome several million years of evolution to manufacture a device that will “tweak” their digestive systems so they produce less methane. Failing that, at least try to “tweak” their brains and vocal cords so upon passing gas they can be apologetic and say, “excuse moo.”
dgdc| 1.15.09 @ 2:31PM
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,315586,00.html
Hauschild-
The only lunatics around here are the ones too damn stupid to do a bit of research. If you can't even figure out how to use your computer to look up a bit of information you should leave the pesky technical stuff to someone who has a damn degree.
Go back to your damn faith healing and leave saving the farmer and the planet to people who have moved beyond fire and the wheel.