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.
Starve the world to a smaller population.
To save the would for the elites we must cut the population of earth in 1/2 by 2050.
This or a massive war people.
And they wonder why Brexit? This is clearly an example of dumb people with nothing to do. Maybe they need to start building fences rather than meet and come up with flatulent taxes.
Uber LIbs want to tax everything that moves – and most of what doesn’t. What is their plan for Global Warming? Taxation. What is their plan for starvation? Taxation. What is their plan Global Thermonuclear War? Taxation. Why did Uber Libs get their collective butts kicked Nov. 8? TAXATION!!!!
its called social manipulation. its a bunch of bull
Look at the room they’re meeting in. They want YOU to live in a mud hut and eat twigs and berries, but they seem to be doing OK.
Worthless do-nothing parasites.
The entire ‘global warming’ , oh wait …let’s call it … ‘climate change’… , oh wait , let’s say ‘ man-made ……’ is all a farce to control the governments and the resources of the planet , and of course , as always , to steal the people’s money by calling it a tax …ha..ha..ha… People , take a look at the taxes now , and of 50 years ago , or 100 years ago ; only one direction …up , up , and away …..
If you tax animal products, which are essential for human health, humans will continue to become more sick. Sick humans create more carbon. Btw carbon is actually good and we as a planet are carbon starved. So basically screw politicians and eat butter and grass fed meat, you will be healthy and have energy to fight these hypocritical nut job retarded global warming propagandists.
I’m betting they don’t want to tax quiche or granola.
Let’s tax food to the point no one can eat, but the tax parasites. Great idea to save millions of lives.
Food tax, card on tax fraud. Where does this money go to what is it used for?? Will it go to help the poor people of Africa, with food , safe water, shelter, medicine??? No I doubt it, it not to help anyone except the people on the inside. The projects were on the bogus Carbon tax if they got it in would be 100 Trillion every 10 years. What could these world manipulators do with that kind of money, further inslave every man, woman, and child on earth, develops more says more instruments to make our lives more miserable and dependent on the Elite for scraps?? No I don’t think we will have it, YOU, or your messed up flase world. No thanks. When you see BullCrap call BullCrap.
Yes, starving a few hundred million to death will greatly help the planet.
I wonder if they will tax everybody that ice skates on thames
Yes, a tax. That’s the ticket.
They want a tax on food to prevent global warming, but won’t tax healthy foods. They also say that by promoting healthy foods there will be less death from chronic disease. So the tax to reduce global warming would also help people live longer, which means more people alive and contributing to global warming.
Climate change clearly isn’t a hoax invented to benefit those who perpetuate it. 😜
THE SOCIALIST LEFTIST DEMS WILLNEVER GIVE UP their attempt to control the entire economy of the planet. The will get help from individual globalist billionaires.
We have to understand that we’re only one generation away from this kind of ‘genius’ to be mainstream. We might only be one vote away. They came close with Hillary but thank God for the Electoral College! Virtually all the posts to this article decry the stupidity of the Globalists. However, the sad part is that these elitists lead the thinking for the LIVERS (low information voters), also known as the clergy, teachers/professors (public unions/tenure), the bureaucracies, and the entire Democratic party. They all hate capitalism and actually believe that they will be part of the ruling class once they’ve succeeded in destroying it. Little do they know that they will be the first in front of the firing squads and re-education camps. But alas, this all must come to pass. This is Satan’s world and he is working frantically to set up his version of utopia via his one-world government, which will fail, ushering in the King of Kings and His millennium rule. But until then, it should be very interesting to see if we can take back our country, without too much bloodshed, and maybe keep it until the Rapture. Using 2 Chronicles 7:14, we stand a chance. Let the Lord do the fighting for us today! May God bless Donald Trump and Mike Pence and keep them safe from harm and let them fulfill their promises. In preparation: Got Lead?
This manage climate change is the biggest hoax on man to steal from the bettors to give to the moochers. You thieves need to be purged and we can reduce the cabin footprint. If you alarmists truly believe this BS you are selling , why not have a mass suicide
I hope these researchers are imprisoned and executed.
TAX MEAT . . . AND LET THEM EAT CAKE!
I GOT A BETTER IDEA . . . REVOLUTION!
It doesn’t appear to me that anyone at that table in the photo is dieting…
It sounds like a bunch a fascist authoritarians to me trying to extract every penny possible from the population. 🖕🖕🖕🖕
Tax on food to “combat climate change” is GLOBAL GOVERNANCE.
They have gone off the deep end with their demands for more tax revenue. Yet, when VW makes a car that goes 300 MPG, it’s limited to low-volume production and ultra high cost. What’s wronmg with this picture?
Our governments, and their central banking and corporate masters, have become a parasitic force on the entire earth. It’s way past time for a little, friendly, global, French-style revolution.
The City of London has cut a deal with China, whereby Communist China is given world prominence by having it’s currency become a world reserve currency. In exchange for that, the City of London will be given first row sits in trading the Chinese currency in Europe further reaffirming its hole as a financial center.
Additionally to that, China has agreed to help the City of London spread the carbon tax worldwide. City of London benefits because the carbon credits market will be controlled by it’s mega banks.
A world where Communist China has such power as to be able to hold and print a reserve currency will be a world where freedom is looked down upon, with internet censorship apparatus being promoted as a good thing. Where free expression of one’s opinions can land you in jail as is the standard in Communist China now.
This whole Global Warming, later renamed to Climate Change, is nothing more than a dirty alliance of the England’s mega bankers with the Communist Chinese to try and enslave the whole of the free world and turn it into something similar to China, a country made of many smaller countries tied together by forceful suppression and of any and all dissenting opinions. Isn’t that what Europe is already becoming?
We must oppose this plan.
We must identify and oppose this people.
This is high treason to the values we hold dearest.
These people are terrorists.