Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Local, a Danish Newspaper, reports that the Danish Council on Ethics, a government funded think tank, has recommended that red meat be taxed to try to combat global warming.
Could Danes face a ‘red meat tax’ to help climate?
Saying that “climate change is an ethical problem”, the Danish Council on Ethics (Det Etiske Råd) has called for a climate tax on red meat.
The council said that Danes have an ethical obligation to minimize their climate impact and that a natural place to start would be lowering their red meat consumption.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization states that animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, more than the the total exhaust from all forms of transport worldwide.
Cattle alone is responsible for ten percent of all emissions and conservative estimates state that at least 43,000 litres of fresh water are needed to produce just one kilo of beef.
The Council on Ethics said that in order to live up to global environmental standards, Denmark should use a ‘climate tax’ to bring down the nation’s meat consumption. The Council said it debated the issue for six months, focusing on whether it should be left up to consumers to make more climate-friendly choices or if government should push them in the right direction by taxing the food products that have the greatest negative impact.
Read more: http://www.thelocal.dk/20160425/denmark-eyes-red-meat-tax-to-help-climate
The Danish Government is less than enthusiastic about the proposal.
A spokesman for governing party Venstre said the government is very unlikely to act on the council’s suggestion, calling it “a bureaucratic monster” that would have limited effect.
“Maybe it would get beef consumption to fall in Denmark, but it wouldn’t do much of anything for the world’s CO2 emissions,” Thomas Danielsen told broadcaster DR.
Read more: Same as above
Perhaps the Danish Council on Ethics should go on tour, try to sell their message of helping the environment with more taxes to impoverished working class regions suffering carbon policy inflated energy costs. After all, the Danish People already pay some of the highest tax rates in the world, so they surely won’t mind paying a little more.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Venezuelans are also cutting back on meat consumption.
no, no, no,
per benben it is increasing “exponentially”
The Danish Council on Ethics has 17 members and every one of them a vegan /sarc
@ur momisugly John in Oz, and I am sure last November in Paris all those delegates ate lettuce. (double sarc)
Someone Denmark need to remind their government why they have canine teeth.
They can explain, too, why camels, horses, warthogs and hippos have canine teeth as well.
IN horses and camels, they have canine teeth, but they are virtually indistinguishable from the other teeth.
Warthogs and hippos use theirs for fighting.
’cause they are omnivorous as well.
MarkW,
Are equine canine teeth “virtually indistinguishable” from molars or incisors?
DonM,
Not merely “omnivorous” but cannibalistic, too! It’s a horse-eat-horse world!
@ur momisugly Mebbe and others, My neighbor got bitten on his arm by a horse, no need for canine teeth, the other ones do just fine indeed, his arm was badly slashed and broken, ( not sure if the horse ATE anything but I would not want to run an experiment.)
Is the climate in Denmark so hot that the thought of a little global warming scares them? Or do they stack their think tanks with people whose job it is to come us with new proposals for taxing the populous?
Have they bothered to determine if the food and protein sources that will replace meat consumption will not cause even more harm to the environment?
…conservative estimates state that at least 43,000 litres of fresh water are needed to produce just one kilo of beef…
Let us just change that sentence a tad.
‘We make up estimates as we go so while The US Beef industry claims a figure of some 441 gallons per pound in 1993 we, The Green Bandits, just keep raising the stakes (boom boom)
Alan Durning. 1991. 840 gallons
Marcia Kreith 1991 2464 gallons
David Pimentel. 2001 12004 gallons (about 45,500 litres)
Note this source (‘Ecocentric Kai Olson-Sawyer 2011’) used gallons per pound. while kilo and litres was used in the body of the Danish article.
And even though Mekonnen and Hoekstra cite the figure (2010) at 1799 gallons we, the Green Liars, shall always cite the higher, warmer, cooler or lower figure whichever is the most alarming figure.
43000 litres per kilo or pound is just another alarmist pitch that will be cited ad nauseum so I would like to cite from the Impeccable and Prestigious RobbertBobbert Science Journal that the latest study of BS and Cow Dung has concluded that the Month Of April 2016 has created 430 million Kilos of Klymit Scyence BS and Cow Dung
This is the largest amount of anthropogenic BS and Cow Dung in any field, let alone climate science, since records have been kept.
Naturally should these records not be deemed sufficiently alarmist to gain significant and long term grants to our impeccable, prestigious and fabulously excellent organisation they can, and will be, subject to adjustment.
43000 litres. Naah. Lets make it 52,000 and we are open to higher bids. And Higher Grants too.
I am just getting sick of this BS , why we are paying these people is beyond me but the sad fa(c)t is that they are elected in the first place.
If the Danes meekly accept this latest bollocks then they deserve to be deprived of everything they can’t afford to buy.
All Danes, please report to your nearest casualty center for processing.
One area (among many perhaps) where the calculation is flawed comes from a lack of consideration of the aspect of feed. Gringojay above mentions the amounts of feed grain necessary in particular instances. Fair enough. What the vast majority of the public and almost certainly those spouting various water claims don’t recognize is that if we don’t feed that “feed” grain to the animals then it will no use at all. Grain is graded for a variety of reasons that can be mostly distilled down to “quality”. Using wheat as an example, at a particular grade it will be very well suited to baking and is of very high quality with very little in the way of defects. In Canada for example you can have #1, #2, #3 or feed grade wheat and all will meet different sets of standards. But that feed grade is, for various reasons (mildew, sprouted, ergot, etc.) not suitable for the uses for human consumption. It’s not necessarily unhealthy (ergot) but may not produce the quality of flour necessary to bake a consistent product. As such it ends up as feed. Farmers strive to have the best quality of wheat (or any other grain for that matter) because it yields the highest dollar return to them, logically because it can subsequently be sold for the most money. No farmer strives to grow feed grade wheat.
Why is this relevant? Simply because any amount of feed grade grain production should be excluded from the water equation. So all the inputs involved, particularly water, should not be factored in simply because little to none of that grain was targeted to be fed to animals. Mother nature simply ensures through various mechanisms (temperature, drought, insect of pathogen damage) that we do indeed have enough to feed to various forms of livestock. I would put a year’s paycheck on the line to suggest that is NEVER factored in to any calculation regardless of how much or how little it is exaggerated.
Tropical rain forests are at best “carbon-neutral”, ie neither sinks nor sources of carbon dioxide. Grasslands however are carbon sinks. So, setting aside any CO2 released by burning the forests, “climate change” alarmists should welcome this transition. If the forests are logged rather than burnt, then the lumber goes into houses or other construction, so is also sunk, stored or sequestered. If pulped for paper, then the carbon storage is less than for structures.
The yellow kite shield in the photo is anachronistic, if meant to represent Vikings in general and the Danish Great Heathen Army in particular. Kite shields didn’t appear until the 10th century at the earliest, and originally for Norman cavalry, to protect the lower legs. The Bayeux Tapestry does however show English infantry using kite shields. Whether this actually happened or was an invention of the Norman artist or seamstresses, I don’t know. But in any case, the GHA was in the 9th century and early Viking raids 8th century.
“The Local, a Danish Newspaper,” — not so fast. The Local has online editions for many European countries and it is based in Sweden. It’s in English in all cases and seems to be aimed at ex-pats, and it is mostly run by ex-pats. See thelocal.com and
http://www.thelocal.se/page/view/aboutus