Your Tax Dollars Subsidizing Methane Gas Emissions
Sandwichman at Econospeak has a post up on subsidizing Methane and the BLM. It fits in with the Bundy take over of the Wildlife Refuge Bldg. He credits 538 Politics for this exclusive The Armed Oregon Ranchers Who Want Free Land Are Already Getting A 93 Percent Discount We are paying for the air pollution and they are getting a hefty discount on the grazing of their cattle.
Sandwichman: Well, looky here. On the one hand, the minimum wage has declined substantially over the last several decades in real terms. But on the other hand, federal government subsidies to a small number of cattle ranchers has increased as the gap between the market price and the Bureau of Land Management grazing fees has widened.
According to a report from the Center for Biological Diversity, “fewer than 21,000 — or 2.7 percent of the nation’s total livestock operators — benefit from the Forest Service and BLM grazing programs in the West.” Furthermore;
The federal subsidy of the grazing program goes beyond the direct costs and fees. There are vast indirect costs to grazing on federal lands, including the government killing of native carnivores perceived as threats to livestock, wildfire suppression caused by invasive cheat grass facilitated by cattle grazing, and expenditure of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service funds from protecting other species threatened by livestock grazing.
And just what comes out the other end of those federally-subsidized cattle? Greenhouse gases… Methane… Farts. According to the Environmental Protection Agency. 26% of U.S. methane gas emissions in 2013 came from “enteric fermentation,” The EPA also explains that:
Methane (CH4) is the second most prevalent greenhouse gas emitted in the United States from human activities. In 2013, CH4 accounted for about 10% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. Methane is emitted by natural sources such as wetlands, as well as human activities such as leakage from natural gas systems and the raising of livestock.
About 70% of that enteric fermentation is done by cattle. So the BLM subsidized cattle ranchers account for about half of one percent (.5%) of U.S. methane emissions annually and .05% of total ghgs from human activities. In effect, taxpayers pay around $100 million in grazing subsidies annually to the cattle ranchers whose cattle emit that greenhouse gas. That subsidy. of course, doesn’t include the uncompensated damages the methane contributes to through climate change.
To be fair, private land is usually more fertile than public land. After all when the US Government was in the business of giving away land under the homestead act, it was the nicer land (which usually meant access to water) that ranchers availed themselves of…So the settlement pattern in the arid west is of large ranches surrounded by even larger swathes of public land. And even a 640 acre (a square 1/2 mile on a side) ranch like the Bundys depends on access to far larger public land surrounding it.
But like the frequency allocations to broadcasters, leases to use a resource owned by All Americans are have come to be regarded by those with permission to use them as private property. One can be sympathetic to a way of life that is disappearing and increasingly difficult from an economic point of view without believing that ever more government subsidy is a good use of resources. And one does NOT have to buy into the crazy fiction that somehow this land belongs to those who live next to them and not to all of us.
Perhaps it is time for the BLM to raise their prices.
Or the ranchers to quit complaining and gaining attention to the low cost of grazing.
Or at least add a new label to the beef when it gets to market: USTS (US Taxpayer Subsidized)
A great cookout for April 15th!
The government really should prosecute those folks. They are criminals.
As a farmer and cattle owner at one point in my life. I would suggest the subsidize of farming is probably one of the areas we need to increase subsidizing, to keep more people on their farms.
Think of the reduction of slums if we did a homestead of public lands where a family might actually eak out a living on a farm.
beene:
I agree with your first point; but as your article points out, the issue is not really grazing rights. It is business consolidation which by the way is also happening with healthcare. The last time they opened up this refuge it became a dust bowl from over grazing and the channeling of water. This article http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2016/01/supreme_court_already_ruled_th.html speaks to the legalities and also the history of that area.
US citizens live on ~5% of its land mass which means there are plenty of opportunities to live elsewhere. This is only part of the issue as you also have to have jobs for them to support themselves in those areas. Another aspect is “water.” Some areas of the country are at a critical state due to not having enough water. This article: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/300-million-and-counting-133184973/?no-ist by Joel Garreau speaks to the population and some of the issues you bring up. Some of the local residents of that area:
A good article on the Oregon cattle ranchers problems and wants vs what they really need.
Lucky day is all white folks or day all b dead rats now. Wers my 93% federal subsidy $ at? I wanna get an dat chuck wagon rida way.
Run, thanks for the URls’. Yes water is always a farming issue, because of cost of well drilling. Not suggesting that we do not need our national parks. I just see slums as subsidizing a rent extracting system that does not seek to solve the issue, at least on a farm people can raise their own food and have some sibilance of a normal life.
Can I get a government subsidy for MY methane emissions?
Yes, but we will have to eat you afterwards.
Solyent Green
From the February 2015 Haper’s Magazine, “The Great Republican Land Heist: Cliven Bundy and the politicians who are plundering the West” by Christopher Ketcham,
Jim A.’s comment about the relative fertility of private and public grazing land is fair enough. Looking at the change in fees over time, however, it appears that the BLM fees have remained virtually unchanged for thirty years while private fees have doubled. Has the fertility of public lands relative to private lands decreased by 50% over that period?
Beene’s comment about keeping more people on farms may not go far enough. I read a recent analysis that suggested one of the few credible scenarios for ecological sustainability would involve shifting a majority of the population back to agricultural employment. That is because manufacturing and service sector employment require massive end-user energy subsidies from mechanized agriculture.
In other words, it may look like the farms that are using all those fossil fuels but it is ultimately the factory, office and retail workers and their dependents who are consuming the food produced on the farms, surplus to the labor employed there.