A Carbon Tax On Beef

Our consumption of beef is a significant contributor to atmospheric CO2 and methane.   I've posted rather frequently about our critical need for a carbon tax. I've posted how the IMF, conservatives, Republicans, even oil companies have supported this, but now an argument is being made that we need to place a carbon tax on beef.

Agriculture, including cattle raising, is our third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, after the energy and industrial sectors. At first glance, the root of the problem may appear to be our appetite for meat generally. Chatham House, the influential British think tank, attributes 14.5 percent of global emissions to livestock — “more than the emissions produced from powering all the world’s road vehicles, trains, ships and airplanes combined.” Livestock consume the yield from a quarter of all cropland worldwide. Add in grazing, and the business of making meat occupies about three-quarters of the agricultural land on the planet.

The emissions come partly from the fossil fuels used to plant, fertilize and harvest the feed to fatten them up for market. In addition, ruminant digestion causes cattle to belch and otherwise emit huge quantities of methane. A new study in the journal Carbon Balance and Management puts the global gas output of cattle at 120 million tons per year. Methane doesn’t hang around in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide. But in the first 20 years after its release, it’s 80 to 100 times more potent at trapping the heat of the sun and warming the planet. The way feedlots and other producers manage manure also ensures that cattle continue to produce methane long after they have gone to the great steakhouse in the sky.

There's no question that we must reduce our consumption of beef and dairy, but rather than accomplish this by fiat, it would be far better to use a market approach and impose a carbon tax that add the true cost to such consumption. 

People who are familiar with my liberal/socialist politics might wonder about my appeal to a market approach, but in my defense I am what is called a market socialist, a Scandinavian type of socialist that believes in a government providing a strong safety net along with social services like free education while at the same time in an economy with well-regulated markets.  And a revenue neutral carbon tax fits right into that.  It is also a strategy conservatives and libertarians can agree with, hopefully making it more likely to happen.