If cow burps are a significant source of climate-changing gases (and they appear to be), all of the hopes and wishes of the people that like to eat them won’t make them not be so. And as silly as it sounds (c’mon, it’s a planet-ripping fart joke!), it’s serious stuff when it comes to changing weather patterns and instability. To get to the point? Farmers are pretty borderline, economically, because they get squeezed by the food industry demanding ever-cheaper prices while they’re also getting squeezed by having to pay huge prices for tractors, Monsanto™ seeds, and other inputs. If they’d slap that tax onto the meat they sell (and hope to recoup it), people would buy less meat and go back to eating a more sustainable diet. Meat is not a birthright, but people act like it is. Thing is, we have too many people. Most societies either eat meat, or aspire to eat more meat. Too much of anything (even cow toots) can be bad. So no matter how big of a joke it seems to be, methane is methane, whether it comes from the back end of a cow or from a landfill. The real solution is for people to just stop consuming So! Darn! Much! of everything. But you’re not going to get that. People believe they’re special and deserving of everything that only kings and royalty had a few hundred years ago, like a meat-heavy diet. If we can’t support it, we’ll just have to figure out what to do when the climate instability comes, but hopefully the inherent barnyard humor will make up for it.