A group of researchers in Oxford University, England have suggested that imposing a massive tax on carbon intensive foods – specifically protein rich foods like meat and dairy – could help combat climate change.
Pricing food according to its climate impacts could save half a million lives and one billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions
Taxing greenhouse gas emissions from food production could save more emissions than are currently generated by global aviation, and lead to half a million fewer deaths from chronic diseases, according to a new study published in Nature Climate Change.
The study, conducted by a team of researchers from the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food at the University of Oxford and the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC, is the first global analysis to estimate the impacts that levying emissions prices on food could have on greenhouse gas emissions and human health.
The findings show that about one billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions could be avoided in the year 2020 if emissions pricing of foods were to be implemented, more than the total current emissions from global aviation. However, the authors stress that due consideration would need to be given to ensuring such policies did not impact negatively on low income populations.
“Emissions pricing of foods would generate a much needed contribution of the food system to reducing the impacts of global climate change,” said Dr Marco Springmann of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food, who led the study. “We hope that’s something policymakers gathering this week at the Marrakech climate conference will take note of.”
Much of the emissions reduction would stem from higher prices and lower consumption of animal products, as their emissions are particularly high. The researchers found that beef would have to be 40% more expensive globally to pay for the climate damage caused by its production. The price of milk and other meats would need to increase by up to 20%, and the price of vegetable oils would also increase significantly. The researchers estimate that such price increases would result in around 10% lower consumption of food items that are high in emissions. “If you’d have to pay 40% more for your steak, you might choose to have it once a week instead of twice,” said Dr Springmann.
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The results indicate that the emissions pricing of foods could, if appropriately designed, be a health-promoting climate-change mitigation policy in high-income, middle-income, and most low-income countries. Special policy attention would be needed in those low-income countries where a high fraction of the population is underweight, and possibly for low-income segments within countries.
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Read more: http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/news/2016_11_Emissions
The abstract of the study;
Mitigation potential and global health impacts from emissions pricing of food commodities
Marco Springmann, Daniel Mason-D’Croz, Sherman Robinson, Keith Wiebe, H. Charles J. Godfray, Mike Rayner & Peter Scarborough
The projected rise in food-related greenhouse gas emissions could seriously impede efforts to limit global warming to acceptable levels. Despite that, food production and consumption have long been excluded from climate policies, in part due to concerns about the potential impact on food security. Using a coupled agriculture and health modelling framework, we show that the global climate change mitigation potential of emissions pricing of food commodities could be substantial, and that levying greenhouse gas taxes on food commodities could, if appropriately designed, be a health-promoting climate policy in high-income countries, as well as in most low- and middle-income countries. Sparing food groups known to be beneficial for health from taxation, selectively compensating for income losses associated with tax-related price increases, and using a portion of tax revenues for health promotion are potential policy options that could help avert most of the negative health impacts experienced by vulnerable groups, whilst still promoting changes towards diets which are more environmentally sustainable.
Read more: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3155.html
This proposal, from a group of people who have probably never missed a meal in their lives, is totally obscene. High income countries often have a lot of poor people who would be hard hit by increases in the price of food.
Needlessly exacerbating the risk poor people don’t get enough to eat, especially children and pregnant mothers, who are especially vulnerable to adverse health impacts from lack of protein in their diet – if this ghastly proposal is ever implemented, future generations will look upon it as a crime against humanity.
Yea, let us lower the global temperature by cutting back meat and dairy consumption at the same time we make it harder to grow plants and vegetables in the cooler climate. This level of education is called Kindergarten!
Why does every “solution ” to so called global warming / cooling / change / xxxxxx involve taking money from people. And what about poor people? Are you wanting them to starve?
WHY IS CHINA EXEMPT from carbon emissions cuts, you Communists?
China is exempt because communists are the elites of society, like Al Gore and DiCaprio, so they get a pass. /sarc
This ongoing FRAUD and myth of so called “climate change”, which is a 100% natural and non anthropomorphic phenomena, is being used by these would be masters of the world as a club to beat the populations of the so called first world down and as an excuse for the expansion of the power of the on going growth of all a powerful gooberment. The “king” is dead, long live the “king”. Reality, what a concept, eh? Wake up people! Just say NO.
Bigger than you YOU ARE Genius
This is oppressive big government crony socialism!
Leski-refugee from soviet block 1980-
Using “the environment” to extort taxes from WORKERS and “redistribute wealth” to Socialist government’s “entitlement” classes that support them politically has been going on for decades. Communists 60 years ago figured out that almost no one will complain about a government that bleeds them dry financially under the auspices of trying to “save the planet”…….
“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
~Thomas Jefferson
Trump says no. And so it will go.
good for america, sad for the UK. the UK will be aboard the globalist agenda to overtax citizens and control people, businesses, land and resources. it’s all a farce.
How about taxing the slamming of our jackboots up their a s s e s?
It’s all about tax and control. These people need to be TRUMPED.
And pray tell, who gets all those truckloads of climate protection dollars? Follow the money. You’ll find a bigger stench at that trail’s end than from all the methane emitted by cows worldwide. Perhaps a more fitting solution would be a $1,000 tax per mile for every private jet flight these climate change warriors take.
This illustrates perfectly what I’ve said for years. The whole purpose of the entire “global climate change” scam is to put a lot of power in the hands of a few people so that they can implement their utopian schemes on a global scale.
In this case, it’s redistributing wealth from the “rich” countries to the “poor” countries, just to make it “fair.”
Beef would have to be 40% more expensive globally to pay for the “climate damage” caused by its production. Milk and other meats, 20% more.
“Emissions pricing of foods could, if appropriately designed, be a health-promoting climate-change mitigation policy in high-income, middle-income, and most low-income countries. Special policy attention would be needed in those low-income countries where a high fraction of the population is underweight, and possibly for low-income segments within countries.”
Just to make it “fair.”
But you can bet that Air Force One will fly on as usual, at $200,000 an hour and five gallons to the mile while the rest of us are forced to shiver in our homes, eat kelp, and ride the bus. And the kommissars will still have their summer homes and their private jets and their chauffeur-driven armored limousines. Don’t ever doubt it.
Count me out.
We all know what the “climate change” agenda is about: more taxes, more control of people business, land/resources. Anyone that tells you different is lying to you and themselves. The government is NOT going to save the world, it’s going to destroy it (and take you with it).
Globalism, full frontal. It’s just begun.
How would tax help? Where would money go? Who stands to profit? Oops? Media “forgot” to do their job, asking ?s, again.
The Global Warming Cult will never quit, will they?
STEALING OUR MONEY is what keeps them in power
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The warmercancers … working to kill the American Way of Life
Asininity like taxing food should never have seen a printed page. But the authors needed funding and they hit upon a good source here. Anything that reduces production of GHGs, no matter how stupid, gets funded and printed. And Nature Climate Change journal is just the vehicle for this stupidity as we can’t help noticing. Behind it is a superstitious belief that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide can warm the atmosphere when illuminated by infrared radiation. Carbon dioxide does get warm in a laboratory bottle that is irradiated with infrared rays but this does not happen in the atmosphere where a mix of gases is present. First, take a note that carbon dioxide is only a minuscule part of total atmospheric gases – 0.04 percent – and don’t put your trust in it. It is not the most abundant greenhouse gas either – water vapor is, making up 95 percent of all greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In comparison, \carbon dioxide share of these GH gases is only 3.6 percent. But this is not the full story yet. Per MGT, the Miskolczi greenhouse theory, carbon dioxide and water vapor, both greenhouse gases, form a joint absorption window for infrared gases whose optical thickness in the IR is 1.87. If you now add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, it will start to absorb in the IR as expected. But as soon as this happens, water vapor present will start to diminish, rain out, and the original optical thickness is restored. Loss of water vapor also means loss of IR absorptivity that belongs to it. Thus, the greenhouse warming expected from addition of carbon dioxide does not materialize and the atmospheric temperature does not rise. Miskolczi demonstrated the constancy of the optical thickness in time by using a 61 year stretch of radiosonde temperature measurements. During this 61year observation period the atmospheric carbon dioxide increased by 20 percent but the optical thickness did not change. The original work appeared in E&E volume 21, issue 4 in 2010. It was also described at the EGU meeting in 2011 in Vienna. Forsake that superstitious fear of carbon dioxide and enjoy your meal.
“The researchers found that beef would have to be 40% more expensive globally to pay for the climate damage caused by its production.”
How did they come up with this nice round figure of 40%? Are they taking everything into consideration when they make their calculations? Any emissions cows produce, come from their feed. Do grasslands stop growing grass when there are no cows to eat it? Did they consider what happens to uneaten vegetation? Isn’t it true that when uneaten vegetation decays or burns it still produces emissions? Cows simply speed up the process. So how do cows make it worse in the long run?
Is there anything left anymore that needs taxing? It’s our fault that we let them do it.
Control food production, you control the world.
Where does the money from a 40% increase get funneled into specifically to “undo” the damage? Their entire argument is one huge gas light/ad hominem with no real plan other than to take more from you into their ponzi/pyramid scheme. If people got up off their lazy asses just 1 time to club enough of them like a seal, this garbage would never be heard from again. Complacence only emboldens them
Even if price fixing worked, which is patently never does, tax is not price. Adding money to the government budget to offset costs which are paid by producers and consumers cannot solve any problem. If the government was somehow actually combating climate change, there might be an ideological argument, but government cannot even determine if climate change is real, much less repairable. Another money grab in the name of the green scare.
MWAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHASHHAHHA
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WahahahahahahaahahhaGh
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Hoo boy … loonies on patrol
Remember, when Naftali invented concentration camps the idea was to feed those who worked harder more, letting the weaker fade away. I guess socialists or communists will never get the word.
The U.K. has more than it’s usual share of crackpots. I know, one of them is a family member. Once they get their teeth into something, they’re like Jack Russell terriers. You just can’t shake them loose.
No wonder the rest of the world mocks Oxford. Stalinist, unintelligent, and downright dangerous people. Want to start a war? Keep it up.