The Comforting Lie of "Climate-Friendly Meat"
The Comforting Lie of "Climate-Friendly Meat"
The industry insists that meat’s problems can be solved with technical fixes. We’ve seen this before.
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The solution is simple: hefty meat tax.
Government has tremendous power to address collective action problems through incentives, regulations, and taxation. In the world of public health, these interventions are ranked on a scale called the Nuffield Ladder, with gentle nudges at the bottom and outright bans at the top. One of the most commonly used tools is taxation. In particular, governments can implement what are known as Pigouvian taxes on things like sugary drinks, tobacco, or polluting factories—the idea is to force producers to cover the cost of the harms their products do. They can also slap so-called “sin taxes” on products to increase direct costs for consumers. These taxes work. Numerous studies show that these are very effective in decreasing consumption, leading groups like the World Health Organization to strongly support them. The academic case for such taxes on meat is robust and convincing. But taxes in general are massively politically unpopular and lead to accusations of a nanny state interfering in consumers’ free choice, as the battles over sugar taxes around the world have shown.
It should also be noted that we currently do the exact opposite and actually heavily subsidize meat, dairy, etc around the world
Thank you.
Just cutting back the subsidies would kill off a good portion of the industrial grade producers.
It would be, nonetheless, very good to actively support small scale family farms, where better practices are often used and simpler to implement and supervise.
Yes, we should subsidize small-scale oil producers in the Arctic. And artesian cobalt mines in the DRC. /s
No, the tax would be temporary. We need to increase the carbon tax over time as a means to phase it out. We dont need carbon energy. Likewise, we need to increase animal ag taxes until its phased out. We don't need to eat animals. What we need to do is stop this unjustifiable, harmful activities.
Yes, lets forbid people that still strive for self sustenance, with small scale farming and animal rearing, to make an independent living.
Get your head out of your ass for a moment and when the oxygen rushes back to your brain realize animals are much more than meat and are an integral part of well managed and sustainable systems.
Animals make use of crops by-products otherwise wasted, manage vegetation and provide fertilizers, just off the top of my head.
And there are regions where no suitable crops can be planted and instead animals are the only means of survival and sustenance for people.
Back off and let people live.
There are better hills to die on than to persecute traditional farming.
We grow all our own meat and veg aside from what we forage, hunt and fish. On a small scale, animals are vital to a healthy and regenerative farm.
Systems are much more sustainable without animals. Its not complex science.
If we want more people to be able to live sustainably off the land, then we should ban animal ag.
Fertilization is easily achieved with growing green manure. Organic materials composted. All without the ecological devastation caused by animal ag
You want to pay a visit to where I live?
Animals - mostly sheep and goats - have been used for millennia to manage vegetation. The moment it was considered an outdated practice, some fifty years back, better resolved by use of machinery, we started having wild fires, due to having unmanaged highly combustible vegetation, that otherwise was consumed by the animals.
Let's avoid black or white purism. Animals have played a fundamental role in our civilization. Let's eliminate the excessive practices and strive for well balanced practices.
Yeah and animals ag has caused many of those areas to turn into deserts. You're right we've been doing it tens of thousands if years, and look at where we are now.
I'm not aguing that we kill all wild animals. Bison and deer are fine (sheep and goats are chicken and cows are not). I'm arguing that we need to stop all human-bred animals that are unnatural species and causing immense damage to the planet.
unnatural species
What?
Humans bred lots of species into existence. We inbred to optimize economic output, and many of them suffer greatly because of it
Can you expand on that, please? Because you are making less and less sense.
carbon tax
Yes, why bother with all the specific areas. A general carbon tax covers it all.
Wether it's meat, flights, propulsion or heating, a single carbon tax sets the right incentives for all these different areas.