We’ve all had the hilarious “cow-based” explanations of political systems/corporations/nations e-mail forward show up in our inboxes at one time or another. Crystal recently forwarded this new one by Mark Gilbert over at Bloomberg. A few of my favorites:

Currency Market
You have two cows. China has 1 trillion cows. Guess who sets the price of milk?

Hedge Funds
You have two cows. A guy in an open-necked shirt drives up in his Bentley and offers to take care of them for you in return for a year’s supply of steak and 50 percent of their milk. They won’t be allowed to leave his compound for two years.

Six months later, you have half a cow, producing sour milk. “You have to be willing to lose rump today to get rib-eye tomorrow,” the hedge-fund guy mumbles through a mouthful of sirloin and champagne.

Carbon-Emissions Trading
You have two cows. They produce 1.2 tons of methane gas per day. After a hefty donation to the re-election campaign of your local representative, the government gives you enough emission permits for six cows. You sell three permits, buy another cow, and apply for a European Commission grant to build a methane-gas power station.

Microsoft Corp.
You have one old, tired cow. A recent heart transplant may have come too late to save the beast.

Google Inc.
You have no cows. You slap advertisements on everyone else’s cows. The milk floods in. You use the proceeds to reinvent the cow.

Apple Inc.
Nobody wants your cows. You design the cutest little milk bottle. Now, everybody wants your cows.

Commodities
You have lots of stocks and bonds, but no cows. Are you crazy? Cows are the hot new market. Here, buy this exchange- traded cow futures contract. It can’t lose. It gained 40 percent in the past six months.

Gold
You have two cows. You wear a cap you made out of tin foil so that the tiny black helicopters can’t read your thoughts. You spend your days blogging about how the government’s decision to abandon the cattle standard in 1933 was part of a global conspiracy by the world’s central banks to destroy the value of your herd.

And, of course, my personal favorite:

Russian Energy
You have two cows. Comrade, those cows are an environmental hazard. We suggest you hand one of them over to us.

(A cute little reference to Russia’s propensity for “Oh, hey, (insert Western energy company’s name here, i.e., Shell), looks like we’ve found a few environmental problems with your project (i.e., Sakhalin-2), might have to revoke your permits for that nice, big LNG facility you’re building. Better to just give us a stake in that, yeah?)

According to the weather report, today’s high in Washington was an incredibly pleasant 73 degrees. IT WAS 73 DEGREES IN MID-DECEMBER. I’m used to winter temperatures in the 70s, considering I grew up in PALM SPRINGS, CA, but 73 degrees in mid-December in Washington-effin-DC? Global warming, FTW!
There is a fun little flash tool on An Inconvenient Truth’s website that lets you calculate the amount of carbon dioxide you produce each year. Here’s mine:

I calculated this using the time period December 1, 2005 – December 1, 2006. Since I only bought the XTerra in October, I obviously haven’t put a lot of miles on it, so I took my odometer reading from the truck and added on a bit more mileage to account for any December 05 driving (when I was last behind the wheel).
What really puts me into the “larger than average” category is all the flying I have done over the past year. But really, what can you do about that? How the hell else am I supposed to get to Yerevan, San Diego, or Houston?

My friend Liz told me that she recently saw Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and thought of me driving around in my XTerra while images of melting glaciers played on the screen. Rather than admonishing me for my choice of vehicle, you should be thanking me for flying everywhere and buying a vehicle that gets 17MPG. Admit it, you love this 70 degree weather in December. I’m just doing my part to ensure that DC will soon have a winter climate equivalent to that of Palm Springs! I always was an altruist at heart.