My two-thirty PM consultation appointment on Friday was with Dr. Arbre Étreinte Birkenstock, Division Director, United States Environmental Protection Agency Office of Air and Radiation. Despite the autumn equinox on Thursday, the weather remained as warm and humid as summer here in Washington DC, and she arrived at my office wearing a sundress, sandals, and no makeup (she’s chemically sensitive to perfumes, rouge, lipstick and cosmetics in general), bearing a knapsack instead of a briefcase. Her mood was one of distinct, positive optimism and excitement, which became immediately evident as soon as she entered and seated herself at the chair located to the right of my desk.
“Have you heard about what Jerry Brown did in California?” she burbled, leaning in with obvious enthusiasm.
“Signed that new California air quality bill into law on Monday?” I responded.
“That’s it!” she exulted. “Once more, California leads the way for the nation!”
“Oh, yeah,” I remembered, “you’re from California, aren’t you?”
“Mill Valley, Marin County,” she confirmed.
“Can’t get much more eco-friendly than that,” I observed. “So how can I help the USEPA today?”
“Give me some advice on how to get the Agency to pass federal regulations that are consistent with California’s new air legislation,” she requested.
“Well,” I noted, “most of the new law addresses issues like reduction of diesel exhaust particulates and curbing atmospheric emissions of hydroflurocarbons used for refrigeration. But your division’s mission concerns control of global warming due to greenhouse gasses, so I assume you’re interested in the provisions related to methane mitigation?”
“Exactly,” she assured me with a smile and a nod. “As we both know all too well, when it comes to causing the greenhouse effect, methane is eighty-four times as bad as carbon dioxide.”
“So says the Environmental Defense Fund, anyway,” I allowed.
“Oh come on, Tom,” she chided with a playful little frown, “if you can’t believe what the EDF says, who can you believe?”
“Okay,” I said, “in that case, I suppose you want to discuss strategies for drafting EPA regulations which follow the new California law’s mandates for collection and combustion of landfill methane with electricity co-generation to be used for sequestration of the resulting carbon dioxide?”
“No,” she told me, “my staff has already worked out how to draft federal regulations for that. What I want to talk about is building on the truly landmark portion of the California legislation.”
“Which would be?” I asked, and truth be told, with no small amount of trepidation.
“Bovine flatulence!” she shot back emphatically. “It’s about time something was done about it!”
“Dr. Birkenstock,” I began, “I know you’re a vegan and an animal rights activist, and that you hold anyone who exploits animals in any way in a significant amount of contempt, but look at the progress we carnivores have made in the last few decades. We’ve managed to get the livestock producers to stop feeding ground-up animals parts to their herds and flocks, we’ve reformed the veal and foie-gras industries, and soon, ranchers, dairy farmers and swineherds, as well as egg and chicken producers, will all have to quit forcing their animals to gratuitously consume huge amounts of antibiotics in order to increase yields. All this while consumer consciousness has been enlightened to a point where raising healthy, free-range, cage-free organic meat and poultry is commercially viable, re-invigorating the economic position of small family farmers at the expense of greedy, amoral agribusiness conglomerates that…”
“If we don’t do something about bovine flatulence on a national scale,” she interrupted, “the greenhouse effect will spiral out of control. After that, there’s no telling what might happen – droughts, fires, floods, hurricanes, storms and tornadoes like we’ve never seen! This year is the hottest one since they started keeping records, Tom! And what about sea level rise? Half a billion people could have their homes and cities inundated by the end of this century! There’s a new study out from Stanford University that says we’re looking at a potential sixteen degree Fahrenheit increase in global temperature! Jesus Christ Almighty, Tom, wake up! The earth hasn’t been that warm since Homo Sapiens evolved as a species! We’re in totally uncharted territory – melting of the arctic ice cap has already affected the precession of the earth’s rotation and caused polar bears to start cross-breeding with grizzlies! What do you want, a telegram?”
“And regulating cow flatulence is going to stop that?” I wondered, rhetorically, of course.
“Anything and everything that can be done,” she insisted, “should be done. Which is why I’m here today talking to you, Tom.”
“Very well,” I sighed, “let’s consider the alternative solution space, then. One possibility, of course, would be to mandate the use of some sort of inexpensive and practical methane capture and sequestration device for field deployment on the subject animals, such as a microbial digester, which would…”
“The USEPA is not,” she interjected, “under any circumstances, going to mandate methane-suppressing diapers on cows. Forget it – that simply isn’t going to happen. Regulations that require farmers to collect, store and manage manure to control and mitigate methane emissions, yes, but I’m not going to be known as the EPA bureaucrat who made cows wear rubber pants.”
“Because it would make you and the Agency look ridiculous?” I ventured.
“If the EPA had a problem with looking ridiculous,” she answered, “it would have done something about Superfund enforcement in Region V sometime during the last thirty damn years.”
“Oh,” I realized, “so what you’re worried about is that your associates in the animal rights movement would ostracize you if you were to propose methane-collecting mitigation devices on bovine livestock. They’d see that as cruel and un-natural treatment, wouldn’t they?”
“Well, yes,” she admitted in a rather sheepish tone. “But they would be right about it, too.”
“Enough about that, then,” I continued, “moving on, the Agency could consider promulgating regulations requiring bovine methane production reductions by use of the best technology achievable and let the livestock people figure out what that would be. But doing so would open the question as to how to measure bovine methane production so as to verify that whatever technologies the livestock industry adopts are, in fact, effective in reducing methane emissions due to bovine flatulence.”
“And furthermore,” she complained, “a solution like that would require the Agency to work with the US Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration to evaluate those technologies for their effects on livestock and the wholesomeness of livestock products. And what would we be talking about, anyhow – some kind of GMO bacteria developed by Monsanto that functions in cow rumens to reduce methane emissions coming out the other end? Yuck! Gag me with a synthetic plasmid! Plus, realistically speaking, we both know the FDA moves slower than a candied turd. It would be a decade before any such technology could actually be adopted, and when it comes to global warming, we don’t have decades to waste anymore.”
“So,” I suggested with a smile, “It’s easy to discern what you’re driving at. What you would like to see is a regulation that mandates reduction in bovine flatulence by use of the best technology economically available – the unspoken catch being, there wouldn’t be one.”
“No,” she concurred with a sly smile, “there probably wouldn’t be.”
“And the EPA wouldn’t have to come up with a way to measure the reduction effects, either. Scientific studies have already established how much methane cattle produce under various conditions, so to calculate how much methane each rancher or dairy farmer’s cows were producing, all an EPA field agent would have to do is enter the various situational parameters and the number of cows, and an application on their tablet computer would spit out how much methane Farmer Brown’s herd can be expected to produce this month. And in a situation like that, ranchers and dairymen are going to conclude that the only way to reduce bovine flatulence methane by forty percent is to own forty percent fewer cows.”
“Gee,” she remarked with an innocent shrug, “I suppose so. Golly Gosh, me-oh-my, what a tragedy.”
“From your point of view,” I concluded, “it’s a win-win solution, isn’t it? Forty percent less methane warming up the planet and forty percent fewer of your animal friends being subjected to the merciless exploitation of the milking machine and the slaughterhouse.”
“I guess it could be viewed that way,” she conceded. “The price of beef and cheese and stuff like that would go up, naturally, and then regular folks would eat less of it – maybe even give that poisonous crap up entirely and adopt a healthy vegetable based diet.”
“Maybe, but what if,” I wondered, “all those people start eating more beans? Have you considered the possible consequences of that?”
“Hmmm,” she mused. “Good point. What would you suggest?”
“Well,” I recommended, “the obvious thing would be a flatulence tax. Just as the statistical distribution of bovine flatulence production has been established by scientific studies, the amount of methane each American produces could also be characterized and quantified based on age, gender, cultural background, lifestyle and the presumed consumption of foodstuffs and subsequent metabolism thereof implied thereby. The results could be interesting. Vegans in San Francisco who eat lots of quinoa, legumes, broccoli and so forth, could very well be found to produce as much methane as someone from Alabama who lives off fried chicken, fried sweet potatoes, chicken fried steak, fried corn dogs, fried frozen candy bars, bacon cheeseburgers, and RC Cola. But if your contemplated nationwide bovine methane reduction regulations come into effect, I suppose at least those chicken fried steaks and bacon cheeseburgers would cost that poor benighted redneck cracker considerably more than they do now.”
“If raising the price of cheeseburgers and chicken fried steaks is the price of saving Planet Earth from global warming,” she resolutely stated, “then so be it. And I’m sure that all patriotic vegans in America would be proud to pay taxes on the methane their exceedingly healthy gut flora make from the exceedingly healthy tofu, oat bran and kale they eat. But how would the federal government collect a tax on methane byproducts of human digestion?”
“Just add it to the federal income tax return,” I explained. “No problem there – the taxpayer would simply check a box indicating their choice to either use standardized Flatulence Tables or allow the IRS to employ existing demographic census and other data collected by the federal government to estimate their annual emissions and either deduct the appropriate amount from the taxpayer’s refund or, if no refund is due, add the amount to the taxpayer’s next annual tax liability. Heads of households and others claiming dependents would, of course, be responsible for the methane emissions from those ah, point sources as well, and joint filers would have to declare their individual flatulence on their joint returns along with their spouses’.”
“But a tax on citizen flatulence,” she fretted, “that would have to go through Congress, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” I agreed, “constitutionally, there’s absolutely no doubt about that. But if Hillary Clinton wins the presidential election, and both houses of Congress return to Democratic control, obtaining the appropriate amendments to US tax laws should be a cake walk.”
“But if not?” she wrinkled her brow in concern.
“Well,” I continued, “If Hillary Clinton wins the presidential election and the Democrats don’t control both the House and the Senate, the EPA will need to regulate human flatulence methane emissions just as it would the bovine variety, mandating a forty-percent reduction by say, 2030 if it follows the California model.”
“But there would be no way,” she objected, “to reduce the human population the way the ranchers and dairymen could reduce the number of cows in their herds.”
“True,” I concurred, “but no biggie, really. With everyone in America breaking wind under USEPA regulatory mandates, the obvious solution would be cap and trade. In response to continuing annual reductions in the tonnage of human methane emission permit totals, poor people would be increasingly incentivized to sell their right to fart to rich people who want to eat lots of foods that cause gas.”
“But how would a program like that be administered?” she implored. “All those millions – no, billions of cap and trade transactions going on!”
“The same IT contractors who gave us the Obamacare Web sites,” I replied, “could provide an on-line solution that every American could use to buy or sell the right to fart.”
“And how would we monitor compliance?” she worried.
“A fleet of EPA drones equipped with methane detectors would first establish baseline readings over a three-year period in representative places, such as Times Square, the Boston Common, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Chicago Waterfront, the National Mall, the French Quarter, the Las Vegas Strip and so forth. If, after institution of a national human flatulence methane abatement cap and trade policy with federal government sponsored e-commerce Internet markets did not prove effective, as substantiated by subsequent methane detecting drone surveillance, EPA would request that the Department of Justice investigate random samples of the cap and trade transactions, prosecuting anyone found to be fraudulently selling their right to fart and going on, right ahead, eating burritos and swilling beer in an environmentally irresponsible manner.”
“Oh, okay,” she acquiesced. “That all sounds perfectly reasonable. I’ll have my people start work on the contingent alternative implementation plans tomorrow.”
“Very well,” I told her, “but remember – execution of those plans depends entirely on the election of Hillary Clinton as President of the United States. If Donald Trump wins instead, all bets are off – considering the lunatic he’s talking about appointing to run it, after a year or two, there might not even be a United States Environmental Protection Agency anymore.”
Dr. Birkenstock laughed out loud. “Impossible! No way the American people are so stupid they will elect Donald Trump!”
“That,” I pointed out, “is exactly what the old timers around here tell me all the Democrats said about Ronald Reagan, and look what happened – he got elected, twice, no less, and there are buildings all over this country with his name on them.”
“Oh, well,” she declared with a dismissive gesture as she rose to leave, “use the balance of your billing time to work out the structures of those implementation plans and email them to me, would you? And Donald Trump is different from Ronald Reagan, isn’t he? Trump makes up lies all the time, and constantly spouts asinine, absurd stories about a fantasy world only he imagines he lives in. He uses xenophobia, bigotry and racism to stir up the most ignorant, frustrated and angry segments of the most pathetic and disgusting examples of the public underbelly. Anyone with an ounce of sense can see he doesn’t have a clue about economics, national security, federal policy or how government works.”
“Ditto on all counts for Ronald Reagan, actually,” I told her as she hoisted her knapsack and walked toward the heavy oak doors leading out of my office into the reception area. “If he’s elected President, the only real, significant difference will be that Donald Trump already had his name on buildings all over the country before he was elected.”