Cut down with cow power

It was with no small measure of indignation that I learned recently of the European Union's plans to improve emissions standards.

Improve standards? The guttersnipes. Blithering mealy-mouthed gobdaws, the whole craven shower of them. I'd like to see them churn this stuff out week in, week out.

Harumph. It was only after I'd bounded down the 613 marble steps from the lofty heights of Emissions Towers and onto the street to destroy my Bavarian Princess with a hatchet in a fit of pique that I realised the world didn't revolve around me. It was a different emissions target they had after all.

Feeling a tad silly, I sat down to formulate my own emissions reduction strategy. It turned out, as you will see, to be a stroke of genius.

As I brushed bits of shrapnel from my devastated old Beemer from my hair, I briefly considered offering this masterplan to the EU as a gesture of goodwill.

I decided against it.

I didn't want to provoke them. They might try to standardise my grammer, make me nip the nasty little barbs off my insults or otherwise impose their will on poor old me, a man who, though grumpy, bitter and sanctimonious, wants nothing but the best for you all.

But rather than condemn it to the wastebasket along with all my other devious stratagems, I give my inspired blueprint to save the world to you instead.

My cunning plan is based around cow power. There are an estimated 1.2 billion cattle and other ruminants on our planet, producing great putrid wafts of methane that's steadily poisoning the atmosphere. The actual figure is 80 million metric tons of methane annually, more even than all the SUVs of leafy south Dublin put together.

Now, rumination is a terrible man for the gas, so it is. The digestion of cellulose creates an unholy conbobulation of odours.

So, is cutting emissions as simple as just getting rid of the cows? Do we all become vegetarians?

Nope. That'd be a case of out of the frying pan and into the tofu mill if ever there was one. I won't go into details, but, suffice to say, vegetarianism is no way to cut emissions.

(For once, I know what I'm talking about. I was a vegetarian for many years during my feckless, flatulent youth. I soon saw sense. A life without Serrano ham and oysters? Sure, that's no life at all.)

My cunning solution is this: harness bovine emissions and use them to power cars. Easily done. A trailer big enough for a heifer towed behind every vehicle. A nice wedge of fetid silage piled in front of her gob.

An eight-foot length of rubber piping attached to her exhaust pipe, through which the precious methane is transported to a fuel tank in the car. An engine converted to run on gas coupled with some manner of a filter to neutralise the noxious fumes.

Badaboom, badabing, cars running on cow power. No petrol emissions, no more stink-cloud hovering over us. We can all go back to being happy and loving each other.

I've put myself at untold risk by imparting this planet-saving knowledge to you. I hope you appreciate my sacrifice.

There are unscrupulous executives in oil companies out there who'd kill to have such ideas suppressed. And here am I giving it away for the price of an Irish Times. I'd like the statue you erect on O'Connell Street in honour of my percipience to be made of solid gold.

A few cow-hitching posts around the base of the plinth would be a nice touch too, don't you think?