I'd Walk A Mile for a Camel
This has gotten a fair amount of play around the Internet, but it's crazy enough to re-link in case you have not seen it. A proposal in Australia to earn carbon credits by shooting wild camels. Because when living, breathing creatures are dead, the environment is protected. Take that to its logical conclusion. All that time those folks were clubbing harp seals, they were saving Mother Nature!
Gil:
The primary reason is that camels are a feral pest in Australia.
June 12, 2011, 8:37 amme:
I don't understand how there are still people who seriously think that carbon credits are a good idea "Oh, we'll just have something unmeasurable traded for real money on the international exchanges and some ratings agencies that determine the actual worth of that paper". Not like that ever went tragically wrong before, n'est-ce pas?
June 12, 2011, 8:52 amMesa Econoguy:
As Gil observes, camels are indeed feral nuisances in Australia, but if this were truly about "protecting" the environment, they would shoot rabbits, a far worse problem there.
June 12, 2011, 9:31 amGeoff:
Think how many carbon credits Stalin & Hitler would have 'earned' !!
June 12, 2011, 10:20 amBlogDog:
Maybe abortion clinics can start applying for carbon credits now.
June 12, 2011, 11:16 amcarnahan:
What they really want to do is wipe most of humanity off the map as humans are clearly the most dangerous parasite on Mother Earth.
June 12, 2011, 12:12 pmJaycee:
As noted above, camels are a feral pest in Australia. They eat plants that would otherwise sustain native creatures. Camels are huge, the food that supports them reduces the capacity of the landscape to support other creatures. Remember that Australia is mostly desert - it takes a long time for vegetation to recover from the depredations of a herd of camels. Furthermore they destroy fences, drain and pollute waterholes, break the natural crust of the desert leading to increased erosion.
Re rabbits : Australia spends a lot of money on attempting to contain rabbits : biological (virus) attacks, shooting, gassing, digging. Rabbits are indeed a terrible pest here. Camels are, however, due to their size, easier to locate and target.
June 12, 2011, 6:00 pmRodrigo:
But, even if there were no moral issues, the factis that while a living camel does produce CO2, a dead one produces much potent greenose gases.
June 12, 2011, 6:38 pmmarco73:
There are many invasive non-native species here in the US. Here in Florida, and elsewhere in the South, there are armadillos. They dig up vegetation, damage underground utilities, and get smashed on the highway with regularity. I'd like to get carbon credits everytime I accidentally run over one of those varmints.
Now of course, on the other end of the cuddly scale, wild mustang horses are non-native to the Americas, having escaped from the Spanish conquistadors 500 years ago. I'd just like to see some enviro-weinie wrap an argument around issuing carbon credits for shooting wild horses.
June 13, 2011, 5:41 amRick C:
To be "fair," this is supposedly about methane production, not just killing pests. However, when I read this I REALLY hoped they were proposing using helicopters, because that would be just about perfect from a lunacy standpoint. How many camels does it take to offset one helicopter?
June 13, 2011, 8:15 amRathtyen:
Camels are an introduced species, and apparently a pest (I don’t go the Central Australia enough to personally know). My understanding is they rank somewhere behind rabbits, wild pigs, cats, goats, cane toads, foxes and possibly water buffalo, but before wild horses, dogs, and most introduced species of birds on the exotic pest list.
While it would be nice if none of these animals had ever been released, it has happened, and there isn’t much to be done about it. We can try to control the numbers (like we do with kangaroos which are culled in large numbers most years – the numbers of many species have exploded with modern farming), but we will never get rid of them.
I like camels, and they do a lot less harm to the environment than foxes and especially cats, plus pigs, which kill and eat a huge variety of Australia’s (mostly small) native wildlife.
To kill camels is by no means the dumbest thing done in the name of global warming, but it is dumb all the same. It will be a lot of cost for any gain – does anyone seriously believe Camels are causing global warming? Seriously?
It is valid to want to manage Camel numbers for environmental impact reasons as they compete with native animals. What really annoys me though is there may well be a commercial approach. It might need government assistance to get going (not a popular idea on this blog, but it is a measure to meet a government environmental objective) with the intention to phase it across to a private operation asap. Camel meat and products are a traditional staple through the North Africa, Middle East and Central Asia. The problem is, there are no more wild camels (except, well guess where?) and domestic herds are rare.
If New Zealand can package up Chinese Gooseberries as Kiwi Fruit and make them popular (albeit Kiwi-bear, meat from possums introduced from Australia, which are a huge pest in NZ, didn’t work so well), there has to be a decent chance for a camel meat market. With all the nostalgia for the 7th Century in the Middle East, how could it fail? We already sell live camels to the Middle East (for racing and mount stock).
Find a way to make it profitable, and the problem (ie camels) will get brought under control. Germany, for instance, imports most of its Boar meat (ie wild game rather than domesticated pork) from Australia. Its not enough to keep pig numbers under control (although it all helps), but then there are a lot fewer Germans than there are in people in North Africa, Middle East and Central Asia, and a lot more pigs than there are camels.
June 13, 2011, 11:11 pmSmock Puppet, Jeapardy Question Proposer:
>>> does anyone seriously believe Camels are causing global warming? Seriously?
Does this question have to be asked? Seriously?
Does an ursinoid defecate in the subtropical forest?
Does the high religious pontiff advocate eating wafers?
Does anyone know of a limit to asinine stupidity such that some moron won't follow it and believe it droolingly and unquestioningly...?
Seriously?
June 15, 2011, 10:58 pm;-D