#817 Zooeructation

It’s tough being green. From mercury poisoning to cow burps unintended consequences are paving the good intentions road straight to global warming hell.
Take the compact florescent bulb debacle. Turns out CFLs all contain a tiny bit of mercury. So when they wear out after their extremely long lives, they can’t just be thrown away. Many anti-global warming folks, annoyed more by the hassle of saving the planet than by whether there’s a crisis at all, are merrily chortling over the green eggs on environmentalist’s faces and hamming it up as they put them down in front of congressional TV cameras.
Compounding it all is that the CFLs—which are legislated by congress to be in a certain amount of use by 2015—are made in China. Not content to poison our children with lead paint on toys, China, through its insidious placement of mercury in our compact florescent bulbs, seems devilishly intent on poisoning our landfills as well.
But at least using CFLs drastically reduces the carbon footprint of our power consumption. The same can’t be said for green cows.
The major environmental consequence of grain-fed beef is the massive power and industry it takes to grow that much corn. “Green” grass fed beef is tastier, has lower saturated fat, and is more fuel-efficient to produce. Only one problem; turns out grass fed beef causes even more methane to be released into the atmosphere than grain.
Cow farts had already been an issue with corn fed beef. But grass fed beef also produce an abundance of cow burps. Which means even more methane. Cow methane contributes 20% of the US greenhouse emission load. Methane traps atmospheric heat 20 times more effectively than plain carbon dioxide. A single cow is worse than a herd of cars.
Science thinks it has an answer. Genetically alter grass so it doesn’t cause cows to burp. Vegetarians are shaking their heads in disbelief. Genetically alter grass to prevent cow burps?
Can’t we all just order salad?
Or why not genetically alter grass to taste like meat and cut out the middle-beast?
Congress has its own answer to the cow burp issue.
Bring it up again and we’ll vote on it.
America, ya gotta love it.