Green Cows & Baby Taxes

If the Zealots have their way this will be reversed, it will be a healthy tax liability.

By Viv Forbes From The Carbon Sense Coalition.

1. Taxing Animal Emissions

For all of its history, the backbone industries of Australia have been agriculture and mining. The Lucky Country always seems to have one buoyant primary industry, and we all feed off it. Today it is coal, gas and metals. Tomorrow it will be food. Yesterday it was wool, gold, butter and beef.

However the Global Warming alarmists have their sights set on all primary industries. Carbon taxes will kill jobs and profits and push up the cost of everything - food, fibre, energy, housing, electricity and transport prices will rise. Some of those using Global Warming scares to achieve different agendas would go much further than a simple carbon tax. Senator Bartlett has already called for a "No Meat Day". Some extremists will not be happy until all cows and sheep are eliminated, and we eat organic onions and bio-dynamic beans by the light of a candle (don't tell them that candles emit CO2, and beans increase flatulence).

The silence of most farmers and farm groups in the face of these imminent threats is amazing. Some have been fooled into thinking they will somehow benefit by claiming carbon credits for increased soil humus. Others look forward to selling their land for carbon credit forestry. Both will prove to be high risk mirages, but the carbon tax will be real.

We aim to get this release into the hands of every farmer, every director of a farm group, every rural politician, every rural newspaper and many consumers and their representatives. We need your help. Please circulate this email as far as you can. Don't worry if we overlap. Challenge them all to protest this unjustified tax on our livestock, our food and our livelihood.

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you! 
-Pericles (430 B.C.)

“All cows are green”.

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called on all farmers and those who eat farm products to raise their voices in opposition to the silly proposals of Australian and New Zealand governments to include emissions and motions from farm animals as a taxable carbon emission.

The chairman of “Carbon Sense” Mr Viv Forbes, claimed that New Zealand has already agreed to include farm animal emissions in their taxable emissions output and Prof Garnaut is also thinking of driving Australian farmers to the Kyoto bail for a similar milching.

“We smart farmers in the South Pacific must have the longest cows in the world – they feed on farms in Queensland and Queenstown and are about to be milked in Canberra and Wellington.

Forbes, who is an animal breeder, pasture manager and soil scientist, said he could not believe the lack of noise from farm groups and consumers on this matter.

“Any farmer would know that no cow, sheep, pig or goat has yet managed to create carbon out of nothing. Nor do they eat fossil fuel. Every bit of carbon sequestered in meat, bones, wool and milk, or expelled in solid, liquid or gaseous animal waste, was extracted from the air by the pastures and grain crops the animals ate. Pastures, crops and soil fungi live on carbon dioxide, the universal plant food from the atmosphere, and water and minerals from the soil. Ultimately, all carbon in the food chain comes from the air (apart from some artificial “foods” made from coal or petroleum derivatives, and very minor soil humus derived from oxidised coal or oil shale).

“This carbon extraction process starts the day the animal is conceived and ceases on the day it dies. This is the carbon food cycle we all live by.

“In fact all farm animals should get a carbon credit, because they sequester part of the carbon extracted from the air in bones, meat, milk and wool. Much of this carbon then gets transferred to the bones and flesh of the growing human population, and eventually gets sequestered in sewerage (often, unfortunately, on the sea floor), bones in the coffins, and soil in the cemeteries. This is a proven process which provides more secure and far cheaper carbon sequestration than some of the billion dollar schemes being investigated.

“In this respect grazing animals are just like trees; both sequester CO2 for their lifetimes, sometimes much longer.

“Of course other parts of the food chain generate net carbon emissions for agricultural machines, processing, chemicals and transport. Each of these activities would attract its own carbon tax. None are essential elements in the raising of domestic animals – the essentials are soil, water, grass and the atmospheric gases, especially oxygen and carbon dioxide.

“No matter how you do the sums, farm animals cause a net removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Thus they should get a carbon credit, certainly not a carbon tax.

“We all know the moon is made of green cheese. It is time to educate politicians that
“All cows are also green”.

(To see photographic proof that cows are green see THIS.

2. Carbon Tax on Babies Next?

Some of them do not intend to stop at taxing cows and sheep. If you think that's just my wild imagination, see this from the Medical Journal of Australia Web site:

"Every new-born baby in Australia represents a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions for an average of 80 years, not simply by breathing, but by the profligate consumption of resources typical of our society."

"Far from showering financial booty on new mothers and thereby rewarding greenhouse-unfriendly behaviour, a "Baby Levy" in the form of a carbon tax should apply, in line with the "polluter pays" principle. Every family choosing to have more than a defined number of children (Sustainable Population Australia suggests a maximum of two) should be charged a carbon tax that would fund the planting of enough trees to offset the carbon cost generated by a new human being."

"This infers a levy per child of at least $5000 at birth (to purchase the land needed and plant trees) and an annual tax of $400-$800 thereafter for the life of the child (for maintenance of the afforestation project) (based on 1990 figures, and probably much more now). [2007]"

- Barry N J Walters, Clinical Associate Professor of Obstetric Medicine, Department of Women's and Infants' Health, University of Western Australia, King Edward Memorial Hospital, Perth, WA.