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.
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For those who really feel mankind is the problem, they should leave and reduce the population & their excess use of earth resources. Until they do they cannot be taken seriously.
Tax food, they are selfish and hypocrites. They fly around cause more pollution than many do in a year, bet their menu causes more pollution than any five of the rest of us. Take, please, that clown Kerry who went to Antarctica and burned up more CO2 than the whole USA does in a full day. What business dose Kerry have in land that has no nation we need to deal with? And can you imagine what the around the world tour of Obama, the advocate of human caused global warming, has burned up? Get rid of the elite and their trips and we save the planet. The environmentalist should be in an uproar about these two trips, until they are rioting on these trips they cannot be taken serious either.
Every time you think the left couldn’t possibly get kookier……………..they do.
Tax any food that hasn’t been converted into ethanol. ( And tax ethanol too. Why not?)
Great Idea. I can feel it getting cooler already.
Oh wait, that’s just Winter coming.
Interesting… There are countries where dairy, and the meat from those dairy producers, comprise more than 50% percent of their diet. Theupy cannit raise or produce crops in their climates. These countries will now be on an “extermination diet”.
Glad to see that point raised. I’ll also add that to replace the proteins, fats, minerals and vitamines found in meats, dairy, and eggs people will have to eat a WHOLE lot more food than they do now and, since it’s vegetable and we don’t have four stomachs, we’ll pass the evil winds at a much higher rate.
If only these legislatures were around BEFORE the Ice Age began.
These “elitist” only want your money. They have nothing else to do. In short, the are nuts.
As everyone knows, the solution to every problem (even the made-up ones) is to create a new tax. *cough*
Taxation is supposed to be funding necessary government functions, NOT serving as a behavior modification tool!
I don’t care who you are… that’s funny right there.
What geniuses. Tax food to help kill off the poor to help the planet. What is wrong with this picture.
“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.”
So what is left for us to eat? Cheapest foods now are grains and high fructose corn syrup. Both are linked to obesity, diabetes and many other illnesses.
https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/diabesity-t2d-18/
I came to the lo-carb revolution because the chronic cough that often left me unable to function escaped diagnosis by a number of specialists. Good news was that after all the test I didn’t have cancer, heart problems or allergies. This carried on for six years and I had some periods of normalcy but it was always there, lurking and ready to make my life miserable. Anyways, after the first six weeks of eating better I noticed that any meds that earlier offered little relief worked much better. Then i was weaned off of the numerous inhalers and continued to improve. Now I am normal with occasional bouts that are rare and respond quickly to treatment. As an aside I also lost 50lbs. which I gained while ill.
I wonder if the North American Diet which has spread world wide will be the next item to be dealt with by the fresh new thinking we are seeing.
These globalists won’t stop until they directly feel consequences for their behavior.
Marie Antoinette had the solution. Just “Let them eat cake”. Of course, that just comment just slightly preceded her conviction by the Revolutionary Tribunal of treason to the principles of the revolution, and her subsequent execution by guillotine.
Quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius.
Princeps insanit. Regnum destructum est,
You “people” in the UK are NUTS! The “March of the MORONS”…continues.
A bit unfair – we’re mostly nuts, but in a nice way. These people, however, are idiots.
Here in the US, already in progress. The Ethanol Mandate which diverts 40% of the nations corn crop into a motor fuel additive.
Do “oxygenated fuels” burn cleaner, as alleged? For 100 years of very intensive fuels research, the effect was never noticed. Only after the EPA wanted it to be true, studies appeared of the sort “Studies Suggest” and “Research Indicates”.
Burning food for fuel is an obscenity.
Taxation has long been a government tool to modify behavior. Why else have a tax on alcohol, for instance? The intent, all along, was to get people to drink less. For their own good, and if not, well, at least for the good of the exchequer.
Jonathan Swift would have surely found this modest proposal quite inspiring.
https://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/modest.html
Just as I’ve always said: the REAL reason for all this climate change fraud is to implement a system of world taxation. It never had anything to do with the actual environment. It was always about installing another brick in the wall of one world government. Now we see it plain as day, out in the open. It’s time for all of Europe to grab their modern pitchforks and surround all of the Rothschild mansions.
Where does the collected tax money go?
I think the world will just decide to build a nuclear plant and not forgo their meat and diary products.
“Nukes or lettuce diet – take your pick.”
These fascist idiots must be stopped! Go, Trump!
This gives a chilling new meaning to the phrase “The government is taxing people to death these days”.
And here is a handy video showing just how much our carbon footprint could be reduced if we would only accept such a modest proposal:
Carbon isn’t the issue and never has been. If you have to fear . . . fear the Sun.
North Korea is just way ahead of its’ time and we just don’t realize it.
A food tax to “Fight Climate Change” is the next logical progression of carbon taxes.
Yet another attempt by out-of-control tyrants to determine for you what you may or may not eat. The sole purpose of the tax is to enrich the elitists while helping to impoverish those they try to have dominion over.
This is insanity! If these idiots are so concerned about ‘global warming’, then why don’t they focus on birth control? This planet is overpopulated. Fewer people, fewer problems. But, let’s be honest: “global warming” is all about the money.