Bush Finally Acts to Curb Global Warming: No Farts

George W. Bush today called upon the nation to stop farting by 2025 and so stop the emission of one of the worst greenhouse gases causing global warming: Methane.

“Every American, every day, blows out a liter or more of methane from his or her rear,” the president said in a speech in the White House Rose Garden.

“I’m today sending Congress a bill to cause the immediate tapering off of this flatus and outlaw it entirely, with criminal penalties by 2025 that will plug up this threat, when I’ll probably be dead from old age.”

For the first time acknowledging that global warming might cause a trifle of harm, the president also called for an income-tax break for every citizen who daily uses Beano. Beano stock today soared by 20 percent before the stock market closed and another 15 percent once the market’s final bell had rung. Until today Beano stock sold mainly to vegetarian mutual funds.

Bush, taking questions from reporters after his five-minute talk, said “as I speak there are 304 million Americans popping methane into the atmosphere. That’s a lot of methane. And we’re adding five persons every minute to our population, many of them from cultures that eat a lot of beans. It’s not hard to sniff a national emergency here.”

Though an outspoken believer that the Christian God created human beings in God’s own image on day one, the president deflected questions about whether his call for eventual criminal penalties against breaking wind runs counter to holy writ.

“I recognize there’s a good argument that farting is natural and necessary, heavenly. But it’s not as good as the arguments for the unrestricted burning of coal and oil and natural gas to light our houses and move our cars. God ordained those too.”

The Rev. Dooby Norwhale of Evangelicals Against Science said the president “is being mislead by other Ivy Leaguers on his staff, elitists. Global warming not exist. And if it did, it could not be stopped because God wanted it. Farting is a God-given right and necessity.”

Truckles Hortense of the Sierra Club said “it’s good Bush finally acts to curb what he has long denied even existed. I, for one, think we could do better though by piping our anal emissions into jars, for burning in stoves and fireplaces. We could set up special jars in our homes and offices and schools.”

Democratic leaders of Congress said they would withhold comment until they actually had a bill to read from the White House. “We don’t mind passing anything that won’t take effect until 2025,” one said. “But we do mind constraining Americans from a practice all indulge from birth. Expect long and serious hearings on this.”

Bush mentioned that his call for a ban on beans has the support of the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association. “Anything that will sell more beef is a good thing,” he said. The Cattlemen’s Association did not respond to repeated press telephone calls for comment.

Roscoe Ripweather of the American Bean Grower’s Association called the president’s call for a ban on beans “a poof that will below away in the wind. He’s truckling to the coal companies and the tree huggers and other cowboys. The right to fart is implicit in the Constitution. We’ll go to the Supreme Court on this if we have to. The Catholic majority there will recognize that once you ban farts you’ll ban incense next.”