Nov 24 2008
EPA Proposal Includes Livestock Taxes
How did we get here?
If you want to understand all the intricacies that would lead to the Environmental Protection Agency to propose [in 18,000 pages of bureaucratic nonsense] what would amount to a tax on livestock as much as $175 per head, you will need to turn off your logic circuits and engage your touchy-feely, save-the-planet emotions.
Try to pay attention, class.
- Climate Change, née Global Warming, is a crisis that will lead to the destruction of the human race if we do not “do something.”
- Greenhouse gases cause Climate Change.
- Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. [Try to exhale less, please.]
- If we call re-classify greenhouse gases [CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, et al] as “pollutants”, then the EPA must regulate them under the Clean Air Act.
- Under the Clean Air Act any entity emitting more than 100 tons per year of a “regulated pollutant” must obtain a permit in order to continue to operate.
- Any operation with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs emits more than 100 tons of carbon and would have to obtain permits under Title V of the Clean Air Act in order to continue to operate if greenhouse gases are regulated.
- At EPA “presumptive minimums” a permit would cost $175 per dairy cow, $87.50 for beef cattle, and a little more than $20 per pig.
And there you have it. When you consider ,for example , that the average profit per hog in Iowa is estimated between $9 and $25 depending on market conditions, a $20 permit allowing said hogs to fart, will likely be met with some resistance. But, of course, resistance is futile. No legislation is required for this to become a reality. All that is required is leadership at the EPA with a very anti-business agenda. In other words, anyone that Obama will nominate. Indeed there is already talk of Obama pushing to elevate EPA administrator to a cabinet-level position.
As a prediction, I will posit that accompanying any such anti-agriculture tax will be a new breed of subsidies to help producers “modernize” their operations (perhaps with some sort of tubing to collect the earth killing methane). This will ensure that the only ones hurt by such measures will those citizens stupid enough to buy food.
