We’ve told you before about the sought-after cow tax that would penalize dinner for eating, breathing, and whatever other functions need to occur. Since cows are not a favorite for the folks at PETA and because environmentally minded advocates know cows produce greenhouse gases like they’re going out of style, beef may be what’s for dinner — but the activists want it to come at a higher cost.

The Business and Media Institute is on the case, and it has some helpful figures. It seems the tax would come to about $175 per head of cattle under a possible new EPA rule:

Indirectly it could be considered a cheeseburger tax, but one of the suggestions offered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in its Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) for regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act is to levy a tax on livestock.

The ANPR, released early this year, would give the EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gas for not only greenhouse gas from manmade sources like transportation and industry, but also “stationary” sources which would include livestock.

It’s worth noting that this one single proposal could raise the cost of a gallon of milk by as much as $0.08. Makes you wonder where we’ll feel the costs of a massive new federal bureaucracy if cap-and-traders get their way.

Dr. Margo Thorning of the American Council for Capital Formation has an op-ed on keys to getting the economy moving. One piece of advice touches on energy and environment policy:

Don’t: Push unrealistic energy and climate change policies.

We need energy to keep improving the world. U.S. economic growth and energy use go hand in hand; each 1% increase in U.S. GDP is accompanied by a 0.3% increase in energy use. The U.S. Department of Energy projects that the U.S. will need approximately 30% more energy by 2030 to accommodate our growing population, higher levels of employment and economic activity.

Meanwhile, popular opinion has caught up to economics on the issue of drilling. Allowing increased access to both offshore and onshore areas for drilling and exploration would also have a positive impact on U.S. energy supplies.

At the same time, many are rushing to legislate regarding global warming. Climate change is a global problem and meaningful reductions in greenhouse gas emissions will require the participation of developing and industrializing countries such as India, China, Brazil, Indonesia and others whose emissions are growing rapidly.

Politicians should avoid imposing tight mandatory emission reduction targets in the U.S., however, because that move could significantly reduce economic and employment growth while sharply raising electricity and other energy prices.

• “State of the Sun for year end 2008: all’s quiet on the solar front - too quiet”
• “How Al Gore Saved Christmas”
• “Why was the world hotter 700 years ago in the ‘Medieval warm Period’?”
• “Green Comes Clean”
• “2008: Another Grim Year for the Global Warmers”
• Examiner’s Mark Tapscott: “Coal Lies From A Progressive Fable Factory”

And one longer quote for your consideration:

Environmentalists, in their opposition to coal of any kind, may provide the coup de grâce. Greenpeace, riffing on James Bond, is hawking a “Coalfinger” spoof on the Internet and is deep in a campaign to stop all new coal plants. U.S. environmental groups recently announced a campaign to expose clean coal as a chimera. Thanks to such efforts, in the United States it’s now nearly impossible to build any kind of coal plant, including tests of clean technology. As the world economy recovers, nations will once again turn to their old stalwart, dirty coal.

Paul Driessen has these facts worth your consideration:

There is no such thing as “clean coal,” environmentalists insist. Burning coal to generate electricity emits soot particles that cause respiratory problems, lung cancer and heart disease, killing 24,000 Americans annually.

It’s the kind of claim that eco-activist Bruce Hamilton says “builds the Sierra Club,” by generating cash and lobbying clout for his and similar groups.

It’s also disingenuous, unethical and harmful.

Since 1970, unhealthy power plant pollutants have been reduced by almost 95% per unit of energy produced. Particulate emissions (soot) decreased 90% below 1970 levels, even as coal use tripled, and new technologies and regulations will nearly eliminate most coal-related pollution by 2020, notes air quality expert Joel Schwartz.

We missed it in the holiday rush, but Marc Morano has this statement at the Senate EPW minority’s website …

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… is the cuddly koala. The logic seems a bit dodgy, but it’s always interesting to see how the deaths of cute animals can be attributed to climate change. We suspect 2009 will be the Year of the Newborn Puppy (they can’t pant fast enough to cool their core temperature!) rather than the Year of the Smelly Water Buffalo. We could be wrong, we’re just saying we see a trend for the propagandists.

From the DC Examiner:

Many states have adopted Climate Action Plans (CAPs) that limit greenhouse gases by 2020, and nearly identical plans are advancing rapidly toward approval in other states.

But according to a peer-reviewed study of the Maryland CAP by the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University in Massachusetts - an economics think tank - these cookie-cutter proposals are “seriously flawed” for multiple reasons. If implemented, the plans could take other states down the same road California is already traveling. Anti-business policies that were often justified mainly on environmental grounds, have cost Californians dearly. Millions of jobs fled to lower tax neighbors like Nevada and Arizona, the state’s 8.4 percent unemployment rate rivals Michigan’s, and political gridlock over a $40 billion budget deficit could leave California bankrupt early in 2009.

It will be interesting to see how people respond to the Times of London column by Christopher Booker, who writes:

Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

The practical effect, for Booker, is something Americans may need to take more seriously:

As 2009 dawns, it is time we in Britain faced up to the genuine crisis now fast approaching from the fact that – unless we get on very soon with building enough proper power stations to fill our looming “energy gap” - within a few years our lights will go out and what remains of our economy will judder to a halt. After years of infantile displacement activity, it is high time our politicians – along with those of the EU and President Obama’s US – were brought back with a mighty jolt into contact with the real world.

We think the same is true for global warming science.