EnviroSpin Watch

Belching cattle and rotten bogs versus those SUVs.....

How much are Green politics really about the politics of envy? This little piece from The Sunday Telegraph (July 4) might help you to SUV it out: 'Let's ban all the methane machines':

"A single dairy cow belches and farts 114 kilos of methane a year. It is a methane machine. Methane is far more lethal as a greenhouse gas - assuming that one believes in all this - than carbon dioxide. It is 23 times more potent, although it does not last so long in the atmosphere. The methane produced by a single cow is equivalent to 2,622 kilos of carbon dioxide.

A Toyota Land Cruiser, meanwhile, if driven an average mileage, doles out 3,722 kilos a year. So a cow does 70 per cent of the damage of a Toyota - even more if you add on the methane given off by its manure. Given that a cow does so much environmental damage, anyone sincere about greenhouse gases should be demanding that they are banned or, at the very least, heavily taxed....." (read on)

Plus lots of udder comparisons,like rotten bogs and run-down rice fields. In Middle Earth, of course, the problem would have been those vast and mesmerising Dead Marshes rather than Pippin and Merry on their Old Toby Shire Cruisers.

Clearly, there are no pat answers. A case of the ignus fartus?

Philip, a 'will o'the wisp', in jolly mood for the European cup final this evening. No England, you see - we can enjoy it! Tea, but no milk - just think of the methane!