While Europeans Vacation, Denmark Attacks Livestock Farmers With Cow Tax
10th July 2024
As Europeans generate greenhouse gas emissions by driving or flying off on their long summer holidays, Denmark is trying to lower those emissions by taxing cow burps and flatulence to combat climate change.
The Danish government believes that taxing methane produced by animals will improve the lives of citizens by lowering global temperatures. Therefore, beginning in 2030, livestock farmers will be taxed $17 per ton of carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO2) emitted by their livestock. That tax will increase to $43 by 2035.
The average cow emits the CO2 equivalent of about three tons per year in methane, so each cow will cost farmers $50 in 2030, reaching about $125 by 2035.
Other livestock such as sheep and pigs are also subject to the methane tax, but they emit less methane because of differences in the chemistry of their digestive systems.
But two professors—William A. van Wijngaarden of York University in Canada and William Happer of Princeton University—argue that restrictions on methane emissions are “not justified by facts.”
There is no suggestion that such a tax will reduce the notional harm to the climate. Governments just like having an excuse to create another tax.