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.
…
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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In June 2012, more than four years ago, Alex Jones did an interview with Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley. It is entitled The Elite’s Eugenics Agenda with Lord Monckton.
[Duration is 53mins-35secs..]
It is well worth listening to and is VERY relevant to this thread.
https://youtu.be/sO-7FQgs9L8?list=PLYeRrrKJdVhMFafwWAbBixF4B3ixNy5ld
WL
it is always about the money with these maggots,while at the same time they are engaged in mass geoengineering
Well since there is no proof the planet is warming, or any hint of proof the seasons ( we have been locked into 4 for a few centuries now) have anything to do with mankind, maybe we should wait on this. Or if the left really believes all this horse manure, stop growing food altogether, that will save on lots of emissions and also not as many people left to cause this horrendous change of seasons every year they call climate change.
No matter how much the earth warms, there will still be seasons. You set up a straw man here.
Oops !
Here is the correct video link …
https://youtu.be/sO-7FQgs9L8?list=PLYeRrrKJdVhMFafwWAbBixF4B3ixNy5ld
Politicians plan to tax food for the EXACT same reason that they tax everything else: So they have more money to spend getting re-elected… and of course, because they can.
First, let’s tax Oxford Hot Air…by the word. That should solve several problems simultaneously!
Take a guess as to which country with a new incoming President WON’T be enabling this silliness now?
ECOLOGY SÍ — GLOBAL WARMING NO!
Then there was global warming… Oh, I’m sorry: I mean “THE ICE AGE IS COMING” (see Time Magazine—also Walter Cronkite, Sept. 11, 1972). There were many articles back in the 1970s that discussed the whole Ice Age problem). Oh, no, cancel that: “GLOBAL WARMING IS COMING.” Oh, no, change that: “CLIMATE CHANGE IS COMING”…..
What hubris, what arrogance has taken possession of us poor little creatures on this mortal coil, that can makes us think that we little ants can change the weather on this huge planet. We forget that glowing star out there that we fondly call the SUN, which from time immemorial has been sending us its powerful rays, its warmth, its energy. We forget the powerful forces in the very belly of our magnificent planet, a planet we think we can tame. We’re acting like little gods.
The Global Warming people often confuse global warming or climate change with ecology. And they say: “Yea, look at India, look at China. How dirty their air and water is.” True, but that’s got nothing to do with global warming or climate change. That’s ecology. We all want clean water, clean air, clean lakes and rivers, unpolluted peppers and tomatoes, magnificent landscapes. And today, at least in the United States, we’ve never had such clean air and water and lakes. Our cars are using fewer and fewer toxic ingredients. Why, even Great Britain’s Daily Mail for Jan. 2, 2015, has this comforting headline: “Carbon dioxide emissions help tropical rainforests grow faster: Study shows trees absorb more greenhouse gas than expected.” Praise the Lord!
But that’s all ecology. We’re all for that. In fact, lets leave our children an even more beautiful and healthy planet than we inherited. But let’s not try to change the climate and temperature of this temperamental Planet Earth. It won’t work. Instead, let’s try to enjoy and beautify this unique and magnificent home lost among the trillions of other planets and stars.
Ecology has nothing to do with global warming or climate change, which is the greatest scientific fraud ever perpetrated on mankind. In a news conference in Washington D.C. on May 13, 2014, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius went so far as to warn the world that “we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos.” Could a French foreign minister be wrong? I figured we earth-dwellers had only a few days left, and Armageddon would descend upon Planet Earth. “Earth, we have a problem.” Stop the world; I’m getting off! Come to think of it: the “climate chaos” predicted by the French foreign minister was to have taken place on September 25, 2015!!! Are we dead or still alive? Oh well, maybe we still have time to make our last wills and testaments. Oh, shucks, there won’t be anyone left to execute them.
Former Vice President Al Gore invented his own “tipping point” clock a few years ago. Excerpt: Former Vice-President Al Gore came to Washington on July 17, 2008, to deliver yet another speech warning of the “climate crisis.” “The leading experts predict that we have less than 10 years to make dramatic changes in our global warming pollution lest we lose our ability to ever recover from this environmental crisis,” Gore stated.
Finally, this past Jan. 2, 2015, Great Britain’s Daily Mail gave the world another big scare with this headline: “Mystery at the sun’s south pole: NASA reveals huge ‘coronal hole’ on the solar surface where winds reach 500 miles per SECOND.” Now we’re having trouble with the sun! But somehow—with God’s help— we’ll muddle through. We always have.
In a word, taking care of the environment has nothing to do with trying to change the climate of Planet Earth. The Sun has been taking care of the climate change for millions of years and will continue to do so despite the fact we humanoids insist on exhaling “poisonous” breath.
Alex!!!!
Where have *you* been hiding? BRAVO for COMMON SENSE!
You say::
“In a word, taking care of the environment has nothing to do with trying to change the climate of Planet Earth. The Sun has been taking care of the climate change for millions of years and will continue to do so …….”
My latest two cents’ worth is:
“This says it all:
Hypothesis:
Climate Change is anthropogenic.
But Climate has been changing since way before mankind took its first steps.
Therefore, Climate Change is not anthropogenic.
QED.”
(My only proviso is that we stand to drown ourselves in our own detritus unless we clean it up ecologically as we go (e.g., micro-particulate-plastic balls). Had we invested as much money in this than ‘fad-issues’, the IPCC & satellite activities, we would have applied the otherwise wasted funds much more usefully.
The global warming hoaxers seem to be having great difficulty with a very simple concept, so let me spell it out, though it really shouldn’t be necessary at this point. The hoaxers have spent 30 years trying to use propaganda, lies, state power, power of persuasion, the idiotic “97 % of scientists agree!” meme, declaring science “settled” which of course science by definition can never be, and every other possible tool in their toolkit to get the public to accept the laughable lie that we can fix the planet if we tax and spend and send money overseas some more. The public no more buys this laughable hoax any more today than on the day Algore came out with his discredited hockey stick graph. We. Just. Don’t. Buy. It. And never will. I feel slightly bad for the generation of scientists, writers, and propagandists that hitched their career wagons to this falling star, but it’s over. With Trump and Brexit and similar events to come, the notion of gigantic government confiscations of hard-earned money to solve imaginary problems is OVER. So, please, assistant professors of climate science, go back to the drawing board, pick a new topic — this time one without the rancid stink of politics — and move on.
Amen
Well said Tostig: Seems to me there are Altruistic Searchers of the Truth (true Philosophers) and then there are Opportunists for whom Truth is a merely a swat-aside Inconvenience in pursuit of their self-aggrandisement, profit-, and power-seeking aims.
There is no low too low for the intellectually dishonest. No tax too great, no suffering too widespread. No activism too extreme, no impact too devastating, no lie big enough. The ‘highly educated’ are THE enemy within. They are the number one greatest threat to our prosperity and sovereignty.
Time to fill up my SUV with massive gallons of gas and meet a friend for a fabulous steak dinner. Then I’ll come home to do 5 loads of laundry in my water hogging, vintage, top loading washer (42 gallons to be exact.) Oh, I almost forgot the bonus laundry detergent spiked with copious amounts of phosphates & surfactants.
Enjoy that gluten free granola bar, dingy whites, and you battery operated beer can on bicycle tires.
Instead of taking beef away from hungry folks, why don’t these Oxford geniuses propose a law to eliminate all the cows in India. The cows are not used as food, but just wander around doing cow things. Most beef cows don’t spend much time on this Earth, so their effects are limited but the Indian cattle are around for many years, heating up the Earth’s climate.
Do away with Indian cattle, save the Earth, and noone starves. Why didn’t they think of this?
They don’t “think” at all. Their sole purpose is to attract funding by saying things the current political paradigm approves of and they do not care whatever it is they say just so long as that is achieved. They are abhorrent characterless spineless human refuse.
Are these Oxford researchers the same bunch that gave phony results in the past, that opened an avenue that made Al Gore a billionaire selling climate change BS?
Thank goodness Trump is coming into office. Hopefully we can remove these alarmist global warming and wackos from any real positions of power before they tax and spend us into oblivion.
If you allow these nattering insulated elitist fools to gain control of your food supply/diet you deserve everthing that happens after that – this is naked autocrat enmity and people will die for it
These are the kind of people who don’t realize slot of ranching is done on lands not suitable for crop growth or is essential in rotational farming.
Taxing food with the aim of reducing consumption as policy.
If the policy does not have the desired effect, perhaps food can be withheld directly until the desired effect has been achieved. It has been done before, so they already know how to do it.
The Holodomor:
Brought on by people who must have been intellectual soulmates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
(Yes, I know it is Wiki)
These people may be thinking they are just playing intellectual games with the oh so trendy themes of global warming and tax policy.
The truth is, the pure Evil shows through with perfect clarity.
Heh, Drudge has a link to this article, now. That was fast.
Oxford geniuses once again prove that being educated and drop dead stupid are not mutually exclusive.
This is just another load of ‘Health-Nazism from the usual suspects
Sparing food groups known to be beneficial for health from taxation…
One week something is found to carcinogenic etc and the next it’s not. They constantly contradict themselves.
It’s fad driven nonsense. Now for that bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, yum……
Out from under what slimy bog rock did these “researchers” crawl?
My family raises our own cattle here in Texas, so piss off you fancy pants ******s. [language policy ~mod]
These Ivory-Tower academics shd put their money where their mouths are, and voluntarily tax themselves per plate. I’ll believe their commitment to be more than grant-seeking hot air when I see them act — as a good example — according to the principles they would impose on society.
The longer that people live, the larger their total lifetime carbon usage goes up. This proposal is counterproductive. Nothing ‘saves lives’ – it only prolongs them – and their carbon usage along with that. A shorter-lived meat eater is likely equal to a long-lived vegetarian in carbon usage. Plus meat is very energy dense, so transportation of the food stuff requires less petroleum as compared to millions of tons of vegetation that requires harvesting energy, transportation energy, and is far less energy-dense per kilocalorie.
These clowns cannot do math.
Left wing nuttery is abundant.
Taxing your food is not going to do anything for the planet,stopping undesirables from breeding is the answer, here in the US we could start off by neutering all liberals and democrats and then work out from there.