The carbon police have taken the tax system not only beyond the extreme, but beyond the absurd.
“With the economy in bad shape and the possibility of a deep recession looming, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to levy new taxes – on cows and pigs,” said American Farm Bureau Federation Director of Regulatory Relations, Rick Krause. “This is no laughing matter,” Krause said, “the cow tax and the pig tax are parts of a larger scheme by the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.”
He told a Farm Bureau in Wyoming under the proposal, if a state charged the ‘presumptive minimum rate’ from the EPA, the cow tax would be $175 per dairy cow, $87.50 per head for beef cattle and a little more than $20 per pig.
He said the USDA claims a producer with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs would emit more than 100 tons of carbon and be subject to the permitting requirements. “These thresholds would impact 99 percent of dairy producers, more than 90 percent of beef producers and 95 percent of hog producers in the United States.
According to Krause, the EPA has issued an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in preparation to regulate automobile greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act (CAA). “The regulation of automobile emissions automatically initiates other provisions of the CAA. One of those provisions requires permits from anyone who emits more than 100 tons of a regulated pollutant per year, and there are millions of sources that emit more than 100 tons of carbon.”
The Title V permits, which are essentially a cow and pig tax, are supposed to contain provisions designed to reduce or eliminate the emissions of the regulated pollutant. “Cows’ and pigs’ methane emissions come from natural and biological processes,” Krause said. “The economic costs to producers from the cow and pig tax would be great and could cause the cost of beef, pork and dairy prices to rise.”
The cow and pig tax would impose severe penalties on livestock producers in the United States without effectively reducing greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.
This is for real because the comment deadline for the cow and pig tax was pegged for November 28, but EPA has said the docket will remain open.
