Q & A with Mullet Man - he's back!

Q: DEAR MULLET MAN,

I’M A KEEN FISHING GIRL BUT I AM REALLY WORRIED ABOUT MY CARBON FOOTPRINT. I WENT AND SAW AN EXPERT FOR AN ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT AND THE BLOKE RECKONED MY EMISSIONS ARE TOO HIGH AND I’M CONSUMING THE RESOURCES OF 2.6 PEOPLE AND MY OUTBOARD AND 4WD AND ALL MY FISHING STUFF IS PARTLY TO BLAME. WHAT THE HELL CAN I DO?

CONCERNED CANDICE, GLEBE. NSW.

A: Dear Candice,

Fuck me, this is supposed to be a bloody fishing advice line! I could just tell you to tell that bloke to blow it out his arse, but that just adds to the problem from the methane. Now carbon footprints is just such a big wank designed to worry people, but the principles of reducing your carbon emissions are pretty fucking simple. When I was studying my doctorate in bio technologies and was giving big Kevin a bit of advice about emissions trading (before the female ranga got her claws in him), I learnt a shitload about carbon. Every wally in the world tends to blame CO2, carbon dioxide, for the problem, but in reality methane gas is a much more contributing gas to the overall problem. When you breathe in you suck in oxygen, and when you blow out you expel carbon dioxide. Now in a balanced ecosystem the carbon dioxide is sucked in by trees and plants that need it to photosynthesise, so if there are enough trees its all good. But when you fart, you expel methane, a foul gas we all know about but don’t generally do much about, and it is the methane that is really the bigger problem. Farts from cows contribute massively to this problem, and there is recent evidence that whales are perhaps the biggest individual contributors to carbon emissions in the animal kingdom as they apparently do the most mammoth sized farts that explode out of the sea surface in a ball of methane.

So from a fishing perspective, reducing your carbon footprint can be done by targeting big fish (such as jewies and barras) that fart a lot. If you take them out of the system, you could be doing the world a favour. When you catch ‘em, don’t cook them using fossil fuels, eat them as sashimi, which reduces your carbon footprint even further. Also, eat more cows.

If you are a gassy girl with a wind problem, you can reduce your methane emissions with a change in diet. There are two distinct groups of farters, the methane producers and the air farters, who expel swallowed air. While these can partly be distinguished by the smells, medical experts inform me that the only clear way to tell the two apart is by the ‘match’ test. A clear blue flame from the fart indicates you are a methane farter, and good dietary advice (avoid baked beans) can reduce the methane produced by your internal workings and reduce your carbon footprint.

As to the boat and 4WD, you need to plant more trees to compensate, or buy a yacht. Some of the fishos these days, with their massive outboards and huge trucks have carbon footprints as big as most African townships, and most of these types look like methane farters to me.

Alternatively, you could do what most of the developed world seem to be doing and not give a shit about it. But like my grandma said, every decent person can control their farts!