I WAS in the laundry at the weekend, watching my home-made beer bubbling away in its brewing barrel.
I proudly told my friends and neighbours that a 740ml bottle of beer only cost me 20 to make, compared with the well-over-a-dollar price they were paying for the mass-produced stuff.
Then my wife came in and asked what it was that was bubbling out of the beer.
Advertisement: Story continues below ''It's carbon dioxide,'' I told her. ''You could get taxed on that,'' she said, loading the washing machine.
It was true, there's a new tax looming. I got out the calculator and worked out that my two brewing barrels make almost 300 kilograms of the gas annually.
While I had the calculator out, I also worked out that each person breathes out about the same amount.
With a population of about 22 million, Australians breathe out seven million tonnes of CO2 a year. Joggers and cyclists are using more calories and, of course, breathe out more CO2 than the rest of us non-fit people.
If the federal government set a price of, say, $30 a tonne, this means our population would be liable to pay $210 million a year for breathing.
We drink 1.8 billion litres of beer each year in this country. Multiplying up from my own brewing calculations, I found that 62 grams of CO2 are produced in the making of each litre of beer; this comes out at 111 million tonnes, or about $3.3 billion a year carbon tax.
With beer making, about one third of the CO2 is dissolved in the bottled beer and is released as bubbles, being consumed and, presumably, burped out of the human system. I've also found out that beer drinkers burp about 10 times a day.
Not all Australians drink beer, of course. Children have to reach drinking age and there are still a few who avoid the amber nectar for various reasons. This leaves roughly half of 22 million Aussies as beer drinkers.
With my calculator melting, I worked out the final carbon tax bills:
Breathing will cost $210 million a year for all of us that do it.
Joggers and cyclists should pay an extra 20 per cent breathing tax.
Drinking beer will cost $230 a drinker a year.
Burping will cost $100 a person a year, or roughly 30 a person a day. Each burp will cost 3.
I'm now worried that my 20-a-bottle boast might come undone if the government realises what I'm doing. I mean, if CO2 is that important and they start to tax it, then they will have to be fair about it, won't they?
But don't hold your breath.
Trevor Meacham
Read more:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-...l#ixzz1K0wT5IhH
