Flatulence Tax

Check out this amazing article on a subject close to my heart. The crux of the article is that New Zealand’s government is considering passing a Livestock....flatulence tax in a bid to reduce New Zealand's contribution to global warming. This is because livestock accounts for about half of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions.

Sheep will be levied at 9c each and cows at up to 72c under the Government's proposals which should raise $8.4million per year.

I think its not a bad idea - but I have a better one. Rather than letting all that gas loose on our environment where it will do untold damage, perhaps we should harness it and use it for good rather than evil!

I therefore propose that we should attach little flatulence catchers to the rear ends of every sheep and cow on the globe. (we could start with New Zealand cause they are so keen on cashing in on the gas) Farmers would go out into the fields every night at the end of a days work and collect the methane filled bags to come back to a central flatulence processor where the gas could be refined and then piped to a central location to be sold to run cars, make electricity and keep gas ovens going!

Opportunities to tap into the human market would also exist. One study I read a few years back said that the average person farted 14 times per day. (I'd say that is a conservative estimate....not from personal experience of course!) That’s 5,110 times a year or 383,250 times in a 75 year life time.

Therefore at the current world population of 6.3billion people we're farting at a rate of 88.2billion farts a day!

Ok - this is gross - its silly - but imagine...just imagine if we could harness it and use it for good!? Maybe I should scrap my children's book ideas and go into the lucrative fart catching business!

Yes it would be a little fiddley, but there would be many benefits.

1. The gas would not be released into the atmosphere and thereby cut down greenhouse emissions considerably.

2. It would be a revenue raiser for individuals and especially farmers world wide.

3. It would mean other non-renewable resources would last a lot longer.

There could be some downsides to it too however.

The biggest of these would be that it could cause war to be launched on countries like New Zealand and Australia which have such high levels of flatulence making livestock. However as an Aussie I propose we work on a strategy for defending our resource by lighting the gas coming out of our cattle at the first sign of a foreign country attacking.

Ok - this needs a group approach. Are there any others out there that would like to put your heads together to think through the logistics of the operation???