Taxing cheeseburgers could help save the climate

Imagine a fantasy future Earth in which kindly aliens or wizards eradicate fossil fuels overnight, replacing every gas tank, power plant and jet engine in the world with green alternatives. Would this mean the end of worrying about climate change? Sadly, no. And the reason, mainly, is those cheeseburgers.

Livestock farming is a dynamo of greenhouse-gas emissions, contributing roughly 18% of the global total, in the form of carbon dioxide, methane from cow burps and nitrous oxide from fertilizer. This is not to mention the associated deforestation, pollution and biodiversity loss, all of which also warp the climate. Even if every other source of warming gases vanished overnight, food production would still generate more than enough to push the planet well past 1.5C of heating above pre-industrial averages. And meat and dairy farming contribute the bulk of those emissions.

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It will probably not shock you to learn that Americans are world-champion meat-eaters. Each American, on average, consumes about 280 pounds of meat per year, second only to Hong Kong. People in poorer countries eat maybe 10 pounds of meat during each trip around the sun. The US is the world’s third-biggest beef eater and its sixth-biggest devourer of chicken. To meet its stated goals of limiting global warming to 1.5C, the US would have to slash its meat consumption by 82%, according to a recent estimate by the non-profit group Compassion in World Farming. That would leave Americans eating about as much meat as people in East Timor.

This seems… unlikely. Every so often, Republicans stir up their base by simply pretending that President Joe Biden, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or some other Democrat wants to snatch the Quarter Pounders out of their hands. Imagine the backlash that would ensue if somebody actually tried.

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Still, merely cutting meat consumption in half would leave Americans eating as much animal flesh as, say, the Danes. And going from the equivalent of a daily Quarter Pounder to one every other day would slash diet-related carbon emissions by 43%, according to a recent Oxford study. It could also reduce the incidence of obesity, cancer and other illnesses. Americans even tell pollsters they’re willing to eat less meat — though apparently they’re not in any rush to do so.In fact, global meat consumption keeps moving in the other direction, as consumers in fast-growing emerging economies gain spending power. People tend to eat richer as they become wealthier, which typically includes shoveling down more meat. In countries where malnutrition is high, this could be a good thing. But people in richer countries could stand to eat much less. There are steps the agriculture industry and governments can take to limit the climate impact, from curbing food waste and pollution to boosting productivity. But such supply-side fixes can only go so far. Sooner or later we’ll have to confront the demand side. Hence the idea of a meat tax, an increasingly hot topic in academic circles and Europe. New Zealand is the only country so far to take the leap, sort of, with a methane tax on farms that takes effect in 2025, but it probably won’t be the last. Even Denmark, which eats half the meat of the US, is considering it.The biggest objection to such a tax is that it would hit poor consumers hardest. But a recent study in the journal Nature Food suggests its effects could easily be offset by giving those households tax rebates and by lowering taxes on fruits and vegetables. Of course, that might fly in Denmark, but it will be a tougher lift in the US. Gen Z support for meat tax is strong, but the rest of the country isn’t having it. Here, a simpler first step could be to stop paying farms to produce more meat. Between 2014 and 2020, the US government spent $10.7 billion per year on direct subsidies to the meat and dairy industry, compared with just $13 million on plant-based and other meat substitutes, a recent Stanford University study found.

Of course, not taxing meat will leave hundreds of billions in indirect subsidies on the table. Meat prices should be 20% to 60% higher globally to account for all the environmental damage they do, according to one study. An extremely rough, back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests this amounts to an indirect gift to meat producers of between $402.5 billion and $642 billion per year.

As politically painful as it might be, governments need to find a way to redirect that largesse to healthier, less carbon-intensive food, including meat substitutes. They could try empowering consumers by pointing out that eating less meat is an easy, tangible thing people can do if they’re feeling powerless in the face of an increasingly chaotic climate. If that fails, then we may need to break out the tax.