Californication: A Thing to Behold

Purer Than The Driven Snow

There is an old saw to the effect that when the law becomes an ass, only donkeys comply.  And so it rolls.  In California, cow farts are now subject to law.

In California’s consistent quest to put the plug in global warming, the Smurf-blue state has turned its attention to dairy cow derrieres, and the gasses said bovine backsides issue forth.

According to Fox 5 in New York, California Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation into law that will limit the methane gas rising from farms created by the cows belching, farting, and manure. Methane is a much more unfriendly greenhouse gas than carbon-dioxide, and while some would celebrate this as another step toward curbing global warming, the law was signed in the face of much protest by California farmers.  [TheBlaze]

Just exactly how, we innocently inquire, will the great Wizard of Oz and his lawmakers limit the amount of bovine excrescence in California?
 The mind boggles, but apparently dairy farmers are now required to have methane digesters in the cow barns.  These wondrous machines turn methane gas, captured from bovine excrescence, into electricity.  The by-product will doubtless be carbon dioxide, which greenies will frown at as well.

The unintended consequence?  Dairy farms will be moved to states and countries less afflicted with political bovine stupidity.

Dairy farmers say the new regulations will drive up costs when they’re already struggling with five years of drought, low milk prices and rising labor costs. They’re also concerned about a newly signed law that will boost overtime pay for farmworkers.  “It just makes it more challenging. We’re continuing to lose dairies. Dairies are moving out of state to places where these costs don’t exist,” said Paul Sousa, director of environmental services for Western United Dairymen.

The dairy industry could be forced to move production to states and countries with fewer regulations, leading to higher emissions globally, Sousa said.  “We think it’s very foolish for the state of California to be taking this position,” said Rob Vandenheuvel, general manager for the Milk Producers Council. “A single state like California is not going to make a meaningful impact on the climate.”

Remember the great Eastward migration a few years ago as businesses pulled up stakes and left the Peoples' Republic of California for far more business friendly states like Texas.  This latest move will likely create a re-run of the Grapes of Wrath, only this time the direction of migration will, once again, be eastward, not westward.

“The bottom line is it’s going to negatively impact the economics of the California dairy industry,” [third generation farmer] Van Groningen said. “In the dairy business, the margins are so slim that something like this will force us out of state.”  No matter how you slice it, it would seem that California is going to drive further business out of its state with regulations that its business owners cannot keep up with, and it will soon lose many of the farms that help its already burdened economy.

We can just see now how this stuff will roll out in New Zealand, the largest dairy exporting company in the world.  We have greenies equally as myopically obtuse as those in California.  Here is the great difference, though.  Dairy cows roam the paddocks in this country.  They are free range cows.  Most of the excrescence from their rears is dotted over the fields and paddocks.

It has been reliably rumoured that the Greens here are crafting legislation that will require every cow in the country be fitted daily with a fresh bovine-diaper each with its own fart bottle to collect the methane.  Can you hear the braying of the donkeys?