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.
Idiots
Given that the UK just passes an Orwellian law to legally hack everyone’s electronic devices, it won’t be long before this gets traction. We are so doomed if we don’t get rid of all of the self-righteous bigots trying to tell us how to think and act.
So, pricing the poor out of protein. Nothing racist about that. Brilliant. Always suspected evil existed in this world, but this proves it.
This is Eugenics masquerading as clumate change policy.
In my country food is already taxed at the cashier. We call it sales tax.
True, but not at 20% or more.
It is in the UK and most of Europe.
It would not surprise me if the Oxford-Martin group also supports eugenics on a massive scale.
It has been pointed out that any higher CO2 levels would be proportionally associated with higher plant growth rates which should result in more food crops. I just read Part 1 of an interesting Judith Curry paper on historical sea level fluctuations. I suggest that people also examine the Panama Hypothesis.
Why is it that the enlightened progressive socialist wanting liberal thinks that everything can be fixed if you tax it. What about those people living on the margin of their society that can barely afford to buy food, much less pay a tax on it? The one world globalists want socialism around the world where everyone is equal. The problem is that socialism doesn’t work because everyone isn’t equal. Their still has to be some sort of leadership and those people become the elites who are more equal than everyone else and everyone surrenders all of their personal freedoms in order to achieve that equality. It didn’t work for pre-WWII Germany who did exactly that and it won’t work for the world. Now you may think that Adolph was a dictator when you were in school. He wasn’t. He was a Fascist who used socialism to create an Oligopoly where he and a few elites with him made all the decisions for everyone else and enjoyed the perks they fashioned for themselves whole those who went without just did as they were told. That’s not freedom, it’s slavery Socialism does not and never has worked to get the most freedom for the people living under it. And a straight Democracy by those wishing to eliminate our Democratic Republic form of of government decays into Mob Rule and Anarchy where you only have what freedoms you can get at the expense of everyone around you..Sort of George Soros style in the country of his birth when the NAZIs controlled it. Nope, if you don’t mind I’ll stick with the Constitutional backed Democratic Republic we have as flawed as it might be. Why? Because of all forms of government and economics it still offers the most freedoms for its citizens than any other form.
This is why academics are academics and not policy-makers. How many pols won election with a platform that included “Raise taxes on food.” as a plank? Never. Food taxes are so unpopular here in the US that on most food products, there are none. Certain foods (processed) are taxed but it varies from state to state. Any party that seems a tax for any reason on food is doomed to lose. Just sayin’.
Notice that every “solution” to the global warming “problem” involves transferring wealth from the general public to a select few, be it government bureaucrats or those peddling imaginary products like carbon credits? Now a tax on food? FOOD? This is such a huge scam that it makes Bernie Madoff’s crooked antics look like a penny ante game of three card monty in some back alley.
What a GREAT idea! We’ll grow less food, because people will be eating less, and then less CO2 will be absorbed by plants and remain in the atmosphere! What idiot thought of this idea?
Let them eat cake
For the good of the colletive, all progressive liberals should commit suicide on their 21st birthday.
“I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit, only way to be sure”
/sarc=”off”
Especially bean burritos
A food tax! Next a breathing tax! This really is descending into servitude … for the little people.
Geophysical evolution has its own rhythms, but also do socio-economics have their cycles. One can pay particular attention to Martin Armstrong’s profoundly consistent algorithms, and suggest that we are clearly in the period of dissolution of governments and accentuation of their natural reflex to tax, suppress and centralise, now developing a crescendo in these attributes as they panic. Carbon taxation and the ruses cloaking the true cause of perturbations in climate are symptoms of this process, as some places rain more and others less.
What is unique about this moment compared to thousands of years of modern history is that there is no longer a wilderness to escape to. The Brexit vote and Trump victory are significant manifestations of a rebellion against the self-appointed kings of the earth, in the new situation that freedom in the human condition is now cornered. So far, we are in the natural swing of another cycle, but soon we may expect to witness the divergent effect of either final subjugation of an entire globe, or else a dramatic collapse of a civilisation. Armstrong’s Socrates algorithm indicates, in the backdrop of a high record of accuracy, a major Dark Age centered on the year 2032, just a decade and a half from now. Less apparent in the cycles is the long term consideration that apparently other civilisations, in the midst of their “surfeit and drunkenness,” have disappeared suddenly from the face of the earth with scarcely a trace. Look around at the condition of mankind – how smooth and sanctified are we to be exempt? Abuse of scientific authority in deception and control of the people, often inbred and stewed in its own corrupt peer-reviewed councils and sanctioned for elite benefit, is falling into a condition on a global scale not too different from the vile arrogance and lies of the swastika, under the familial hatred of humanity at large as a second class species to be domesticated.
From this I declare my independence loudly for all to follow or to reject in their tragic complicit fear, as I say, piss on my leg, but don’t tell me it is raining.
That’s why we came across the pond to get away from those Looney Tunes.
God said there will always seasons and also said that he’s in charge of where the ocean stops on the shore. People need to listen to him instead of looking in the mirror and praising yourself.
Oh yeah and the polar ice caps that are not melting he’s got a handle on that too
Who’s SUVs and BBQ grills melted the massive ice caps thousands of years ago? Just wondering????
Maybe we should impose a high tax on all processed foods with wheat or corn, maybe it would reduce emissions and poisonous Glyphosate that is making the world sick.
And I figured this out in 15 seconds in a coffee shop in Mn.
Maybe we should Eliminate the input from all talking heads at Oxford or other ivy leagues that feel they have the answers to our world problems and hand it back to the common folks who make logical practical sense.
They’re not the ones looking to be recognized for fame and fortune!!
It’s like Charles Dickens never even existed.
What a complete load of pure bullshit
These people are looking for trouble!
The report states that taxing the beef will create revenue to pay for the damage caused by the climate change. But the report also states that taxing the beef will result in eating less beef. Where is the logic in that. If you are eating less beef, you are generating less revenue for climate change. But you are also taking jobs away from farmers and ranchers that will go out of business. Creating more poverty, and even less people can afford to eat high priced beef. How does that help the environment? I think we should promote eating as much meat as possible. Letting them live is creating more greenhouse gas. India needs to be taxed higher for all the emissions their beef is creating.
Every hydrocarbon molecule in the food chain comes from plants converting carbon dioxide+ water + sunshine into delicious hydrocarbons + breathable Oxygen.(CO2 + 12 H2O → C6H12O6 + 6 O2 + 6 H2O) …. we should be subsidizing carbon intense foods…. they require the most carbon to be removed from the atmosphere…
As mankind is the cause of climate change, then the cure is simple: mandatory birth control and eugenics. Reduce the population level and carbon loading decreases.