Boy, if Ireland thought they had mad cows before….
Ireland’s government is reportedly seriously considering plans to destroy 200,000 cows to meet its mandatory climate change targets from the nutsy-cuckoo European Union. Farmers will be offered financial inducements participate in the bovine holocaust. Thus the collateral damage of net zero emissions insanity, a sub-category of The Great Stupid, is extending to cows, just as AOC wants it to in her “Green New Deal.”
There shouldn’t be a lot to argue about here: killing 200,000 Irish cows now will have exactly no effect on the climate even if the most apocalyptic and hysterical scientific models are correct. It’s like the Biden and Obama killing pipelines: it’s just climate change theater and virtue-signaling, except that the pipeline decisions just killed jobs and brain cells of rational people thinking about them.
And yes, in this case, just seriously considering such an obviously wasteful policy is sufficient to justify Ethics Dunce honors even if ultimately rationality prevails. Even pondering such idiocy is signature significance, as when grandpa says, “Yeah, I was thinking about flapping my arms and flying out the window to visit Neverland, but decided it was too far away.” You call the rest home and double quick, even if Gramps had seemed lucid before.
Writing for The Telegraph, Jamie Blackett makes the error of trying to argue facts and logic with the mentally deranged, saying in part,
Spending vast sums of taxpayer’s money on destroying productive animals would be a perfect summation of the net zero madness infecting the West. The Irish Department of Agriculture has said that the report was just a “modelling document”, but no sane government would even get to the point of including such a plan in “a deliberative process”. Why? Because it is irrational….And we should be embracing the energy-creating capacity of cows. Tallow from British cattle is already being turned into biodiesel – a one tonne animal produces enough for around 180 litres. And thanks to Somerset-based start-up, Biofactory, new anaerobic technology is already available to turn the methane in their manure into usable electricity and heat. The manure itself is converted by this process into a more nutritious digestate that can substantially reduce the need for harmful artificial fertiliser.”
Ugh. You just encourage these cultist by arguing on their terms. Any cool, considered examination of the climate change issue must reach the conclusions that a) the cure is worse than the disease, politically, economically and rationally, b) the cure isn’t even definitely a cure, c) it’s impossible anyway, and d) the issue is being manipulated weaponized by globalists and Marxists e) as well as science-ignorant dolts like Joe Biden.
The truly frightening aspect of all this is that what once would have been risible has gained enough gullible believers to threaten cows in Ireland.
Ethics Alarms 
Ireland sold out to the Germans and the EU decades ago. They took all that money. They need to stop grazing sheep and growing trees to stay in the EU. Makes me ashamed to be mostly Irish.
Another example of the malignant mass hysteria that does not recognize geographic boundaries.
The only requirement being compliant willing hosts for which there appears to be a nearly unlimited supply.
Global leftists: All ruminants must be sacrificed to Gaia!
Animal rights whactivists: Whatevs, comrade.
I’ve no doubt spent more time in rural Ireland than you have, Jack.
Irish cows are nasty.
They deserve to die.
There was an end-sarcasm notation to the above that never made it to the page.
Don’t worry: it didn’t need it.
My one foray into rural Ireland (around Galway) was memorable: we ended up trapped in a rustic hill community festival where Grace was stalked by a guy trying to sell us a ram; we were treated to two “Babe” clone border collies herding sheep for us for no apparent reason (and with no humans in sight), and I helped catch a runaway horse!
But the lamb is incomparable. Out of this world. Out of the pasture, to the butcher and then into the oven and onto the table. Unlike any lamb I’ve ever had.
“You just encourage these cultists by arguing on their terms.”
In my experience, using the other person’s terms is the most effective approach, when you also start from their perspective and extend their approaches to the logical conclusions.
Here’s how I’d apply the deconstruction method to the idea:
1. Make them comfortable: “Alright, let’s say we cull all the cows to reduce carbon emissions.”
2. Make them think: “Here’s what we currently use cows for, which we’d be sacrificing by doing this. Do we have anything to replace cows for these purposes, or a way to sidestep those needs entirely? Additionally, is there something more effective at reducing carbon that we could be doing that doesn’t involve getting rid of all the cows?”
3. Make them choose. Letting them know that because they have options, they’re responsible for the consequences of their choice.
I find it’s very effective at encouraging people to consider the factors and options they should have considered before they started pushing their idea.
EC: “In my experience, using the other person’s terms is the most effective approach, when you also start from their perspective and extend their approaches to the logical conclusions.”
What Scott Adams calls ‘Embrace and Amplify’, (to the point of absurdity).
Reductio ad absurdum.
Just as long as it’s not introducing strawman absurdities. If they have any valid points, we don’t want to dismiss those, any more than we want to kill cattle unnecessarily. Otherwise we lose the opportunity to integrate those points into a better solution.
It’s obviously a plot hatched by New Zealand to corner the luxury butter market.
I’m joking. Mostly. I would not be surprised if the EU wanted to limit Ireland’s production of butter and cheese in order to give an advantage to Germany or France.
I’ll take the T-Bones, with the filets, of course!
I doubt argumentum ad absurdum would work with these folks. They themselves are absurd, so they will accept any absurd consequence as a useful end.
There’s been a couple of comments that have brushed on this, but I want to make the point clearly:
I think a part, and perhaps even a large part, of some of these “Green” initiatives is an attempt to realign certain people socioeconomically. Activists say it out loud: The people the think are most negatively effected by climate change, their words, not mine, are black and brown people and people living in second and third world nations.
What they won’t say is that the people most negatively effected by reducing carbon emissions are people living in the first world. They’ll lie and spin, “Oh, there will be so many new jobs in producing green energy!” “Oh, the bugs are delicious!” and on and on… But I really do think they know they’re lying and that they care, to some extent, but their caring is reversed and they probably that a policy position that weakens the developed world in favor of the developing is a net positive. It hits all the regular positions to cleanly to have not crossed anyone’s mind.
Frankly, Why should an environmental progressive care if Ireland bankrupts itself by killing their agriculture sector if it creates opportunities for the right kind of people?
Great another giant wave of Irish immigration …just in time for our next Civil War.
Boy, you really are Gloomy Gus these days.