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Cow Flatulence No Longer a Laughing Matter
We all giggled, guffawed, or groaned at the Green New Deal’s line about cow flatulence causing the end of the world. We wiped up the coffee we had spewed over our phone or keyboard. Then we went about our lives as if this was not a clear and present danger.
Well, the dairy farmers of Wisconsin, the state built on (dairy cow) cheese and beer, are not laughing now. No farmer across this country should be in anything but full fight mode now. There is no flight option. John Hinderaker of PowerLine Blog has the story [emphasis added]:
The Green New Deal, and similar environmental initiatives, have little to do with the environment and much to do with the Left’s desire to control every aspect of our lives. Because everything we do, beginning with breathing, involves emission of carbon dioxide or other “greenhouse gases.” AOC’s Green New Deal specifically proposed, among other things, that all air travel be banned and that all cows be done away with because they produce methane.
…Today’s decision from the Minnesota Court of Appeals (which may have been justified by a completely different issue that the Court addressed) should be a wake-up call to all Americans that liberals aren’t kidding when they say they want to prevent us from eating meat, or drinking milk or consuming other dairy products, in the name of “climate change.” The battle has been joined, and if normal Americans don’t get engaged, the Left will win. As they did today.
Read the rest at the link. The case is In the Matter of the Decision on the Need for an Environmental Impact Statement for the Proposed Daley Farms of Lewiston, LLP – 2018 Dairy Expansion Utica Township. While no federal court is bound by this case, count on this being cited as persuasive authority in every state court across the country where Lab Coat Leftist professional litigants spot a judge sympathetic to the fundamental transformation of America.
Published in Environment
There is a huge industry living off these regulations. Much of the frantic opposition to Trump is funded by these “green” (the color of money) corporations. Think about windmills. What is the cost of the subsidies ? In the days when I was a high income professional, these were recommended as tax shelters and the economics were explained, at least in part.
This is big business. Sure there are crazy shock troops but there is also big money involved.
It is also a lot of smaller businesses. See the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity. Search on their name and you will get a series of court cases.
I am not sure the Republicans have done nothing. If it were not for the lowly rank and file Republicans in Calif, MTBE would have continued to be mandated as a 9% by volume addition to our gasoline supply.
The end result would have been MTBE contamination of 50% of all Californian aquifers. This means not only a massive loss of possible drinking water sources, but farm irrigation sources as well. (One of the few good things about this carcinogen is that it can be detected by both taste and smell even when its proportions are 4 parts per billion. Even water with 4 ppb would end up tasting like kerosene. So there would not be any way to use MTBE-tainted water for much of anything.)
The R activists on this important issue were ridiculed by Diane Feinstein, and the Sierra Club. Luckily Gov Davis, a Democrat joined with the Republican activists in having concerns. His Blue Ribbon Panel decreed that MTBE was all risk and no benefit, and the substance went out of the gas supply.
Gov Davis paid with his career.
It is true that many Republicans are now uneasy about talking about environmental issues. But Republicans raise their families and desire a healthy environment freed from pollution, just as Dems do. We need a party platform on the issue.
This one compendium shows exactly how funny they are. But you are correct: we need to take them seriously, even when they spout off about the planet ending in12 minutes or twelve years or whatev’s.
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions?fbclid=IwAR1RJPxjghAP4comfU0jt1jQXDHWzoc9v2ylSHwK0FgfDclcJtw0E_2jPOg
A CA state law was passed that cows must be allowed X amount of time out in the field each day. Some of the more noteworthy families in the org dairy industry in Marin began writing letters to the editor about how their pampered cows did not like being forced out into 38 degree sleet storms in winter, or blisteringly hot 102 % days in summer. (Cows in the org dairy movement in Marin are as pampered as my household pets.)
The farmers’ rationale was not considered important of course. Even though that rationale was based on the clear common sense requests of the cows themselves!