The President's Daily Brief - June 9th, 2022. New Zealand is Proposing a Gas (and Burp) Tax. Should America Legalize Drugs?

Episode Date: June 9, 2022

It’s June 9th. You’re listening to the President’s Daily Brief. I’m your host and former CIA Officer Bryan Dean Wright. Your morning intel starts now. First, New Zealand is planning to tax cows based on how much they burp and — ahem — pass gas. It’s all part of a plan to stop climate change — and you might help pay for it. We’ll discuss. As always, I’m keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put these two on your radar. First up: Wheat Wars. Time is running out for getting Ukraine’s crops to market — and prevent global starvation. I’ve got an update on a new northern train route to the Baltic Sea. Second: Should America legalize drugs? How about marijuana, in particular? Because I’ve got a study for you on how cannabis affects relationships, marriages in particular. All up next on the President’s Daily Brief. ------ Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's June 9th. You're listening to the President's Daily Brief. I'm your host and former CIA officer Brian Dean Wright. Your morning intel starts now. The brief you're about to hear is in the same spirit of the actual President's Daily Brief, which is a top secret summary of the most critical events in the past 24 hours, all delivered to the president each day by the nation's spymasters. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I am your spy and this is your brief. Here's what we're going to be talking about this morning. First up, New Zealand is planning to tax cows based on how much they burp and pass gas. It's all part of a plan to stop climate change, and you might help pay for it. We'll discuss. As always, I'm keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put these two on your radar.

First up, wheat wars. Time, as you know, is running out for getting Ukraine's crops to market and to prevent global starvation. Well, I've got an update on a new northern train route to the Baltic Sea. Second, should America legalize drugs? How about marijuana in particular? Because I've got a study for you on how cannabis affects relationships, marriages in particular. All up next on the president's daily brief. This is a Bose moment. You've been there. Small talks going nowhere, but then the Bose speaker kicks in. Music you can feel fills the room. And no more chat with Danny from accounts. Your life deserves music. Your music deserves Bose. Find your perfect product at Bose.com.

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These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. First up this morning on the PDB, New Zealand, a country home to 5 million people and 10 million cows. And it's those cows who are in trouble this morning because they produce too many burps and too much flatulence, both of which are contributing to climate change.

That is the allegation being levied by the government of New Zealand. And yesterday they released a plan that would put a price on agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, targeting cows and sheep in particular. Here's the plan. Ranchers and farmers will have to pay for animal gas emissions starting in in 2025. There will be different charges for different kinds of gases on all the different animals, but there will be a single measurement to calculate the volume. I have no idea how that's going to happen, but the jokes pretty much write themselves there. Anyway, ranchers and farmers can lower

their tax bill if they mix in certain feed additives that help reduce gases, and they can also plant some trees on their farms to help reduce their carbon dioxide footprint. This proposal is still in the working stages, but it did get a good initial reception. A final decision, though, is expected at some point in December. All right, as always, we ask ourselves, why do we care about this news, in particular, all the way down in New Zealand. But before we dive into that, I want to offer up a little bit of a disclaimer. My family has farmed and ranched in this country since the 1600s. We still have an operation in Oregon raising cattle and hay, so I am very biased on this topic. So, With that caveat out of the way, let's dive into why you should care.

And I want to start first with your pocketbook. If you eat beef, some of it probably comes from New Zealand. We import about $1.2 billion worth of New Zealand beef each year. So if they start slapping these sorts of taxes on their animals, well, odds are that some of that's going to be passed on to consumers, people like you and me. Now, it's possible that American ranchers could increase their herd sizes and keep prices lower, basically box out New Zealand meat and capture more market share.

But beyond all of that, there's a bigger reason for why you and my family should care about this story. And that's because this animal gas tax could very much be coming to the United States. Do you remember the Green New Deal that came out a few years ago? It was hyped by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She's a socialist gal from New York who goes by the acronym AOC. Well, she and other Democrats like her came up with this Green New Deal as a way to fight climate change. And it had all kinds of different ideas. For instance, they called for completely ditching fossil fuels, no more oil.

Next, they wanted to upgrade or replace every building in America and make them better insulated to consume less energy. And they also wanted to overhaul transportation to the point where, and this is true, air travel stops becoming necessary. That's actually a quote from AOC herself. Now, they also had something to say about cows. AOC gave an interview where she was talking about greenhouse gases in general and her desire to get them to zero over 10 years, but there was a problem. Here's how she described it. Quote, we aren't sure that we'll be able to fully get rid of all those farting cows and airplanes that fast over those 10 years.

Did you catch that? AOC and her friends would like to abhoring cows. polish airplanes, which is shocking in and of itself. But all those terrible farting cows, well, they got to go too. So saying that differently, as I speak to you, America has elected leaders in the House and the Senate who want to slaughter all of America's cows, but are frustrated because they can't. And that's because ranchers and farmers, well, like their animals, thank you very much. And consumers do too, especially on the grill. Now, one of the ways that AOC and her friends could get around this opposition is by passing a tax, a tax on the gas emitted by

America's cows, and sheep and pigs, all of them. And that's because, well, look, the more that you tax something, the less people want to consume it. It just gets too expensive. And so if you tax cow farts at a high enough level, eventually people stop eating beef and sheep and pigs. Well, goal thus achieved. AOC and her colleagues, have actually spoken favorably about this animal emissions tax just like New Zealand is now considering. So yes, this is very much something that could happen here if AOC and her like-minded Democrat friends gain power. Now, I should probably mention one last thing here. If anybody is keeping track of actual data and science on this, cows and sheep emit 31 million tons of greenhouse gases in New Zealand.

Now, compare those 31 million tons to China's greenhouse gas emissions. Beijing emits, and get ready for it, 13 gigatons. Now, one gigatone is one billion tons, and China emits 13 gigatons. New Zealand's poor little cows, they're just at 31 million tons. Plus, China plans to increase its greenhouse gas emissions this year. that's right, increase their emissions by 7%, all because they plan to increase their production and use of coal by 300 million tons. So all told, China's greenhouse gas emissions from three years ago were greater than the

entire United States, Europe, and yes, New Zealand combined. So in other words, the data make clear that if you believe in climate change and that it's bad and that we need to do something about it, New Zealand's cows are not where you should focus your attention. The same goes for America's cows. And that's important for all of us to remember, because we've got a midterm election coming up in November, and you've got a choice.

You can support AOC and her colleagues to adopt things like the Green New Deal and cow gas taxes or not. But you should know that an animal gas tax will absolutely come up sooner or later in this country. And that's because New Zealand just showed the way. Coming up, a closer look at what's on my radar, but first, a few messages. Exema is unpredictable. But you can flare less with ebbglis.

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As always, I'm watching a few of the stories this morning. Put these two on your radar. First up, wheat wars. As PDB listeners know, time is running very short on getting Ukraine's crops to market and to prevent global starvation. So I've got an update, and it's one that we briefly touched upon a few weeks back. Ukraine could send its crops out via train through its northern neighbor, Belarus, and then on to Lithuania, where it could be loaded on the ships in the Baltic Sea.

And this would be a great route for a number of different reasons, but most especially because of the train track issue. If you recall, there was another rail route through Poland, but it was tough because the two countries, that is Ukraine and Poland, have different train track widths, and that requires very lengthy delays of swapping out train wheels or unloading and then reloading the wheat. But none of those obstacles would present themselves in Belarus or Lithuania. They all have the same track with. But unfortunately, there's a reason that we haven't spent much time talking about this northern route. And that's because Belarus and its leader are very close to Vladimir Putin. In fact, Moscow used Belarus as a staging ground when they attacked

Kiev before they eventually retreated. So the idea of getting Belarus to help out Ukraine and the world, well unfortunately it's been kind of a long shot but diplomats of the UN and some officials within the Biden administration are taking a very hard look at this route and saying let's give it a shot so the deal would be this if Belarus lets the wheat go through its country the world would give them a six month waiver on sanctions which are currently slapped on their fertilizer industry again those sanctions were applied after the country started helping Putin with his war so obviously they That would be a nice chunk of cash for Belarus to be able to sell its fertilizer when global supply is so low and price is so high. But that would probably make Putin pretty mad because right now he's using wheat as a weapon of war. And this northern route would take that weapon out of his hands. So a diplomatic effort is underway regardless, all to see if the world can sort of peel Belarus off of the Putin war train for at least just six months to get some of that Ukrainian wheat out. Now, odds are it's not going to happen. Putin has a very tight grip on that country and its leadership, but who knows? I'll keep you posted. The final radar brief for the morning, do you think America

should legalize drugs, specifically marijuana? So lots of people have opinions on this, and lots of states have actually already started to allow marijuana for medical purposes, and in some cases, recreational too. It's created a whole bunch of controversy. But instead of diving into that very big topic of drug legalization this morning, I've got a study that I want us to think about as we wrestle with our opinions. It's a study about how marijuana or cannabis affects relationships, marriages in particular. So there was a small study done about 145 couples, and it was conducted by the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Each couple had one partner who used cannabis. The other partner didn't. So here's how the experiment went. The researchers facilitated first

a 10-minute discussion between partners, and it was on a topic that they identified as a major source of conflict. In other words, they were looking to provoke a fight and then see how each partner handled it. Well, the researchers measured all sorts of things, for instance, physiological stress, like heart rate and respiration. Then afterwards, they held a five-minute discussion on topic where the couple was in agreement. They were looking for how well or not, the two supported each other as they explained their positions. And then afterwards, researchers asked each person of the couple how they thought both of the conversations went, how satisfied, for instance, they were with the conflict part, the first conversation. The goal was to see if marijuana users process conflict

differently. They communicated with their mates in some different way. I mean, we all have a vision of pot users is relaxed and chill. But is that really true, especially in intimate relationships? And again, this is a big deal because if states are legalizing cannabis, it's going to affect the state of America's families. So here's what the researchers found. Participants who used weed more frequently showed less ability to be flexible with their partners. They issued more criticism and more demands.

They were also less able to reorient themselves to a discussion about the the positive aspects of their relationship after they had that first conflict-ridden conversation. But here's what's fascinating. When researchers asked the pot users how they thought the conflict conversation went, well, they thought, yeah, they did pretty good. In other words, they weren't aware of their own behaviors or the impact on their partners. So whatever your views might be on legalized drugs for weed or otherwise, now you have a bit more data to work with on on how it might impact relationships. And that's especially important if you use marijuana for things like pain management.

I certainly know people who do. So overall, a good study with really important implications. I hope you got something helpful out of it too. And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes your morning brief. As always, we close out the show reminding each other of why we are here, talking about our country and our world. It's the creed of every good spy and every smart American. It's from John chapter 8, verse 32.

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