Reason blogger Katherine Mangu-Ward links to this story from RIA Novosti about a recently approved tax in Wallonia, a French-speaking region of Belgium. According to the report, the local government there, which represents some four million Belgian citizens, will now require all Wallonians to pay a 20 euro tax for the privilege of barbecuing. A barbecue releases some 50 to 100 grams of CO2 into the atmosphere, so the Wallonia government will discourage this eco-outrage with a tax, and will monitor compliance…”from helicopters, whose thermal sensors will detect burning grills.” It’s hard to imagine that barbecuing could produce more CO2 than an enforcement regime that relies on helicopters–but the fact is, Europeans don’t barbecue. They grill. Here in America, a real barbecue might put 100-times as much CO2 into the atmosphere over the course of a 12 hour session–perhaps making enforcement from above practical, though still completely ridiculous. Take The BBQ Guy, for example. He described his Fourth of July barbecue thusly:
Now that’s a lot of CO2.
A real American barbecue. Courtesy of The BBQ Guy.
