Poop. Farts. Burps. 💩💨😏

Most Americans don’t think much about Denmark. When we do, we’re amused that a tiny Scandinavian peninsula still owns Greenland, the world’s largest (and most dishonestly-named) island. Or maybe we think of the gorgeous capital, Copenhagen, where the Little Mermaid statue guards the Langelinie pier and promenade. But Denmark is surprisingly quite rural. Two-thirds of its land area is dedicated to farming. And there are five times as many pigs and cows in the Land of the Vikings as there are people.

You might think with all those farms, the six million Danes needn’t worry about their contribution to climate change. How can a bunch of farm animals compete with heavy industries pouring carbon dioxide into the environment? But Denmark makes its own unique contribution to the global warming problem. And they’re looking to solve it through, what else, taxes.

Here’s the problem. Cows and pigs poop. A lot. They fart. They belch. All of that activity puts out methane, a colorless, odorless gas composed of carbon and hydrogen. Methane is 28 times more potent at trapping greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide. And methane levels in the atmosphere have more than doubled in the last 200 years, mainly due to human activity.

And so, Denmark’s parliament has just decided to enact the world’s first climate tax on livestock. We can’t imagine the cows and pigs will be any happier being taxed than we are!

Of course, moo cows don’t have bank accounts. So, how does Denmark tax them? Starting in 2030, farmers will pay 300 kroner—currently about $43—for every ton of emissions their animals produce. That levy will go up to 750 kroner by 2035.

The EPA estimates the average cow produces 220 pounds of methane gas per year. Pigs, by contrast, produce just 10 because their stomachs don’t ferment plant material during digestion. However, pig farmers generally store their manure as a liquid slurry in tanks or lagoons before using it to fertilize cropland. That process lets bacteria break down organic material and produce even more methane.

Naturally, Denmark’s farm lobby fought the new tax. (Human lobbyists had to do it for them—cows generally find organizing email campaigns and protests difficult because they don’t have opposable thumbs.) So farmers will get rebates equal to 60% of the tax. And they’ll get incentives for things like adding Beano-like supplements to their cows’ diet to cut methane emissions or sending their pig manure to special facilities that convert methane into natural gas.

Denmark isn’t the only country to propose taxing livestock emissions. New Zealand has 4.6 sheep per person—down from 22 in the 1980s! The Kiwi Island’s livestock is responsible for half of the country’s carbon emissions. Farmers fought back, though, and the government eventually abandoned the plan.

Here in the U.S., we have about 36 million cows at any one time. Twenty-eight million or so are destined for the slaughterhouse, where they’re turned into everything from prime steaks to school lunch hamburgers. The remaining 9-ish million are busy producing milk. We also have a national debt that stands at 36 trillion dollars. (That’s a million dollars per cow!) If you were a cow, just minding your own business somewhere out in a field in America, you’d probably worry the tax man is coming for your farts, too!

This week’s story is mostly ridiculous, unless you’re a five-year-old boy just starting to learn dirty words. But it illustrates just how far some countries will go to find new sources of revenue. It also illustrates how precisely lawmakers can target taxes to influence their citizens’ behavior. Fortunately, we’re on your side, using our opposable thumbs every day to help you pay less!