Earth Report

It's never seemed truly American to worry extravagantly. We embrace diversity, of course, but gloomy, weepy types have customarily been relegated to the margins. They are not the content of our character, which is famously optimistic.

This could be a reason why authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner report in their new book "Super Freakonomics" that the country's fears of global warming have been subsiding.

Curtailing carbon dioxide emissions boils down to prohibiting many uses of fire. Fire has been popular since prehistoric peoples started using it for warmth, tool-making and rendering food safer and yummier. Nowadays, vilifying oil companies and coal-powered industries, kicking car companies that are already down and tiptoeing guiltily through your carbon footprints doesn't always satisfy cravings for guilt. How about real changes in lifestyle?

A correspondent recently wondered if global warmists should punish the bread industry because yeast makes all those CO2 bubbles. He thought the peasants should eat cake instead of bread. I reminded him that baking powder makes bubbles, too. That's why cake is light and fluffy instead of tasting like sweetened glue.

The EPA now has authority to require large bakeries to scrub their smokestacks of yeast-created ethanol that escapes from dough when bread is baked. Maybe the Carrie Nations of global warming will take up their figurative hatchets and commence demolishing pizza shops. Then if CO2 doesn't worry you enough, there's good old Elsie the Cow.

Bovine flatulence contains methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than CO2. With billions of cattle roaming the globe, we've got plenty to fret about. Hollywood, that temple of self-restraint, fields numerous animal rights activists who insist that humanity needs to cure yet another dangerous addiction and quit meat and dairy products in favor of veggies; eschew wool, leather and fur.

Doubters facing sham readily exclaim, "That's bull——!" Is the passing of gas by domestic cows destroying the biosphere as we know it? If so, methane control might require a "Blaapp tax" added to cap-and-trade greenhouse gas management. Who wants the job of methane monitor in the milking parlor? Dairy farmers already endure condemnation from the new asceticism. Do they need enviro-cops running past lines of cows' backsides with high-tech toot meters recording violations on their BlackBerries?

Supposedly, around one-third of anthropogenic methane issues from domestic cattle. But before restricting the side effects of cud-chewing by another tedious, administrative bureaucracy, we might consider whether our wretched species has actually accelerated the global breaking of wind by keeping herds of domestic animals. If punishing felonious flatulence is a necessity for saving the planet, we should know if the billions of wild animals that predated the emergence of homo sapiens are any better than the critters we have now. Maybe someone should investigate the hinterlands to see if raccoons, weasels and woodchucks are tooting more than their rightful share.

We know how tough it is to prod humanity to act on its collective conscience. What if we all vanished in a plague or migrated to another planet with better surf, cuter beachgoers, redder convertibles and a more forgiving atmosphere? Or checked our entire sinful species into Ethical Suicide Parlors and returned this biosphere to our noble predecessors? Presumably domestic animals would die off, since they're no longer adaptable to wild, natural conditions. Wouldn't the world be repopulated by the critters that predated Holsteins and Merinos? Don't buffalo, antelopes and giraffes pass gas? Haven't they always? What about camels? They sure look like they do.

Then there's elephants. I wouldn't want to stand downwind of one of them, even on a lucrative dare. For all we know, there's no hope for the stratosphere until we make the remaining herd into piano keys and umbrella stands and get it over with.

People produce methane, too, especially if they eschew pork chops in favor of beans. Uh-oh! The list of enviro-criminals is getting huge.

Tom Gelsthorpe, a sailor and former farmer, lives in Cataumet. Call him at 508-564-4919 or e-mail him at gels_adelphia1@comcast.net.