UK Researchers: Tax Food to Reduce Climate Change

Unlike many folks, I’m a man of action. As I said above, when I heard about this, I wrote to the corresponding author, Dr. Marco Springmann, to express my astonishment. He has graciously responded, saying:

On Nov 20, 2016, at 8:28 AM, Marco Springmann wrote:
Dear Willis,
I appreciate your message, and I am sorry you seem to be taken issue with our study. Allow me to explain our findings and motivation a bit more.
What we are proposing is that any climate policy that would include the food system should be designed with a health perspective in mind to make sure that people are not put at a disadvantage as a result of the policy. For that reason we propose to use the emissions-tax revenues for health-promotion programmes that would, e.g., make fruits and vegetables more readily available and cheaper, and for compensating vulnerable groups in society for the income losses they would feel when food prices would increase. We find that climate policies that include such compensatory mechanisms could, in principle, do both: reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and thereby lessen the expected impacts of climate change, and encourage people to eat healthier and thereby extend their healthy lifetimes.
The exact ways of how one would go about designing and implementing such policies of course depend on regional circumstances. And such circumstances include foremost the perception of the people living in that region. What we wanted to do with our study was to encourage a discussion among those people–citizens, policymakers, industry, farmers, etc–on how we could address some of the challenges that our food system, our health, and our environment will be faced with now and in the future. Our study is only one such proposal, and I think it’s up to all of us to come up with potential solutions that engage constructively with those challenges. We are all in this together, and the more things we can collaboratively move forward and influence positively, the better. So let’s talk with each other instead of against each other. I’ll be here to do that.
With best wishes,
Marco
Dr Marco Springmann

I’ve replied to him as follows:

Dear Dr. Springmann;
First, thank you for your reply. However, I fear that you start out with a wrong idea, which is the mistaken notion that there is some reason that you should rejigger the entire food system so that it fits with your political ideals and your climate fears. There are some difficulties with that.
To start with, nobody but the elite gives a fig about climate. Here’s the UN poll, nine million people said “Nah! Not interested!”. Climate is number sixteen, and that’s only because there weren’t seventeen choices. Not only that, but the poorer that people are, the less they are concerned about climate alarmism. Many of us don’t want to waste one dime on climate claims until there is actual evidence that the hypothesized danger is real.

SOURCE: UN Poll

Next, it appears you do not understand just how arrogant it is to imagine that you and your team, or any single group, knows just how people should eat. What on earth gave you the idea that people out here care in the least what the personal food prejudices of you and your people might be?
This point of view, that the elites such as yourself have the right to lecture plebeians like myself regarding the proper way for humans to eat, is one reason Hillary just lost the election. She found out that people have gotten tired of being lectured and regulated and talked down to by people who might have used a shovel but have never had to sharpen one.
Next, you are wildly underestimating the resistance that people have to changing their dietary habits. I used to train people to be Peace Corps Volunteers. Like you, the Trainees all wanted to rush out and start telling people that they were eating wrong, and how to eat better. I used a couple of examples to show them how resistant folks are to changing their diet, and how deep these feelings run.
The first example is, the people in Africa keep cows in part because they can do a magic trick. They can convert grass, which humans cannot digest, into milk, one of the richest protein sources known. The Peace Corps Trainees were often advocates of vegetarianism. I said, should the Africans then give up their cows, which assure milk for their babies, and which provide even more protein in the form of meat when they die?
Besides, I told them, in Africa they’ve figured out how to get even more protein out of the cows than anyone gets in the West. Of course, they were curious how that further magic trick is done. It turns out that in some tribes, they open a vein in the neck of the cow, and then plug it up with a wooden plug. When they go out to to milk the cow, they get the milk. Then they take out the plug, mix in a pint or so of blood with the milk, and put the plug back in …
So, I’d ask the Trainees, how many of you would change your diet to include that blood-milk, given the fact that it provides much more protein from the same animals?
Our food preferences run deep.
For the second example, I said that when the locusts swarm in Africa, they eat everything. Every leaf. Every stem. So when they land in grain fields there, the people will sometimes set fire to the fields. Now, clearly that doesn’t help them save their grain … but they know they’ll lose the grain anyhow, and at least this way they get a bunch of roast locusts to eat … I’d ask them, are you ready to sign on for eating roast locust? Are you going to tell them that eating insects is wrong? Will you recommend field-roasted locusts to your family?
Our food preferences run deep.
As a result, here is what I, and I suspect many other people, will say about your plan:
I eat what I eat, not randomly, but because like many people I’ve thought a lot about it. Not a little. A lot. As a result, I greatly resent your idea that you have some divine insight that my way of eating is wrong, and that I should be eating the way that you think is best.
That’s bad enough, but what really angrifies my blood is that you are proposing to tax my sorry corpus to FORCE me to eat like you want me to eat. How dare you!
Seriously, do you truly not understand how paternalistic and offensive this is?
I’m sorry to be so direct with you, Doctor, but recent events in the US have shown me just how out-of-touch the elite in general and the academic elite in particular can be. So I am attempting to make sure you understand just how far off of the rails it looks like you’ve gone.
You are NOT on the high moral ground here. People don’t care about your non-problem. Worse, you are proposing to forcefully intervene in people’s eating habits with the justification that it may, not will but has a chance of, helping poor people in 50 years. What to you is obviously an academic exercise will be highly damaging out here in the real world if we are ever unfortunate enough to have it inflicted on us … and the worst part is, you seem to have no concept at all of the arrogance and elitism in what you are proposing.
Look, you’re obviously a smart guy, and a man who can get things done. There are loads of real problems in the world that require real solutions. How about you apply your skills to those problems, rather than wasting your valuable energy to trying to force me to eat your way in order to non-solve a non-problem … do you really want to blow your valuable working years jerking around with this nonsense and hurting and insulting people in the process? Do you want your epitaph to be:

                Here Lies Marco
He Tried To Force People To Eat His Way
                     They Didn't

Because according to the polls, the poor of the planet sure as hell don’t want you wasting your precious time on climate. They have fifteen other things that they think are much greater problems … and me, I think you could make a real contribution to people’s lives in one of those fifteen arenas rather than making things worse by sticking your nose in my personal eating habits.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. In hopes that this is taken in the positive sense in which it is intended, I remain,
Respectfully,
w.
PS—You might enjoy a couple of posts I’ve written on this subject:
Animal, Vegetable, or E. O. Wilson
Vegans are not from Vegas

There you have it … who knows what it will do, but I have to give it a shot.
Best to all,
w.