The Green, Green Grass of Home

In my previous post (At last a tax that won't hit me!), I discussed the crass suggestion from the UN of taxing the flatulence of the world's cows. To redress the balance, how about this?

Nearly $5 per square foot per year. That's the estimated savings by tenants of environmentally friendly buildings because of fewer employee sick days, according to a study cited by the US Green Building Council. About 55% of respondents in the study also indicated that employee productivity had improved in green buildings.

The work was based on surveys of 154 buildings under [CB Richard Ellis Group] (CBRE's) management, totalling more than 51.6 million square feet and housing 3,000 tenants in ten markets across the US. The study defined a green building as those with LEED certification at any level or those that bear the EPA ENERGY STAR ® label.

See this URL for more details: http://www.usgbc.org/News/USGBCInTheNewsDetails.aspx?ID=4250

That web page goes on to discuss the financial and other implications of building environmentally friendly structures. If it really is all true and the findings apply world wide, we need to sit up and listen. Building in a green way might, I say just might, offset some of that flatulence of the cows that the UN is so afraid of!

DW

At Last a Tax that Won't Hit Me!

How about this, from today's Financial Times (Call for tax on livestock emissions By Javier Blas in London, 19th February 2010):

Livestock should be taxed to reduce the contribution made by their flatulence to greenhouse gas emissions, the United Nations said yesterday in a report that will give anti livestock campaigners fresh ammunition.

The novel suggestion by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation to use taxation comes as campaigners focus on the impact on climate change of emissions of methane from cattle, sheep and pigs.

Have you ever heard anything so stupid? Cows are well known to belch methane gases as they ruminate and digest. Methane is a noxious greenhouse gas. Blah! Blah!

How about Mr Phiri in Malawi tending his ONE cow? While large beef and dairy farms in the UK employ advisors and tax consultants to optimise their tax bill, Mr Phiri will meet the Malawian tax inspector and be hit with a demand for, say, 100 Kwacha or goodness knows how much these people can dream of charging. Mr Phiri will have no one to advise him.

The poor will pay this tax, as always. Then again, real enforcement will be a nightmare and the French will demand that all cows must be French speaking cows and they will want a subsidy for them anyway.

Crass!

DW