A Tax Too Far

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:

I put 2 pork butts and three racks of ribs on the smoker at 8:15 p.m. The ribs finished up at 12:30 a.m. and the pork butts were taken off the smoker at 2:30 a.m. before I headed to bed.

Now that's a lot of CO2.

A real American barbecue. Courtesy of The BBQ Guy.