The Comforting Lie of "Climate-Friendly Meat"
The Comforting Lie of "Climate-Friendly Meat"
The industry insists that meat’s problems can be solved with technical fixes. We’ve seen this before.
Climate friendly meat is a black bean burger
A recent study published in Global Food Security, for instance, shows that humble legumes, with the right government push, could provide a far more sustainable and diverse source of protein than meat
i'm still bummed the humble black bean burger (usually no extra charge) has been replaced by beyond/impossible (usually a $1-3 upcharge) at so many restaurants.
The thing that I hate the most about it is it's the same fucking price at the grocery store, but somehow that equates to a 40% more expensive burger. Meat is ungodly expensive nowadays such that my partner and I opt for meat substitutes because it's often cheaper and we prefer them anyway.
I understand economies of scale, and that they're buying less of it so they're gonna be paying a little more, but $3 per 8oz burger is absurd. Burger places have lost their goddamn minds when there's often way better ramen noodles next door for half the price.
I was going to say Soylent Green.
The solution is simple: hefty meat tax.
Government has tremendous power to address collective action problems through incentives, regulations, and taxation. In the world of public health, these interventions are ranked on a scale called the Nuffield Ladder, with gentle nudges at the bottom and outright bans at the top. One of the most commonly used tools is taxation. In particular, governments can implement what are known as Pigouvian taxes on things like sugary drinks, tobacco, or polluting factories—the idea is to force producers to cover the cost of the harms their products do. They can also slap so-called “sin taxes” on products to increase direct costs for consumers. These taxes work. Numerous studies show that these are very effective in decreasing consumption, leading groups like the World Health Organization to strongly support them. The academic case for such taxes on meat is robust and convincing. But taxes in general are massively politically unpopular and lead to accusations of a nanny state interfering in consumers’ free choice, as the battles over sugar taxes around the world have shown.
It should also be noted that we currently do the exact opposite and actually heavily subsidize meat, dairy, etc around the world
carbon tax
Yes, why bother with all the specific areas. A general carbon tax covers it all.
Wether it's meat, flights, propulsion or heating, a single carbon tax sets the right incentives for all these different areas.
I got your climate friendly meat right here
The thing I can never get behind is that this is always used as an argument for new technologies instead of returning to lower tech, pre-industrial solutions that are already well established and known to be safer.
The problem with this is lifestyle inflation.
Pre-industrial technologies will only get us pre-industrial amounts of meat, which has to be split between the current population.
There's a lot of people who probably won't be very happy with only being able to afford meat once or twice a week. That seems like a surefire way to trigger a backlash.
this is always used as an argument for new technologies instead of returning to lower tech, pre-industrial solutions that are already well established and known to be safer
Maybe because it's about economical efficiency. The old ways were abandoned in favor of new methods, because the new approach was cheaper / yielded higher profits.
Yes, we could produce meat like we did in pre-industrial times, but that would mean higher prices or lower volume. Either way, it would mean less people could afford to eat meat. Like in pre-industrial times.
The problem with meat is not that we eat it, but that we eat too much of it. Most people eat a week's worth of meat in a single day, and that results in the over production of meat, which is helping to destroy the environment.
The problem with meat is not that we eat it, but that we eat too much of it.
This isn't how it works. Consuming meat and cheese and butter and other animal products has been made into a conspicuous consumption deal for a long time, it's a status symbol, obviously important to pastoralist cultures and their industrial descendants (like The West).
You can't do "low meat" without first attacking the status power of meat.
People would go crazy and riot over reducing it, as it would most likely manifest as:
- Rationing of meat (I've lived in this, in Romania, a long time ago) - possible, but hard, not really something that works in capitalist market economics.
- Raising the prices (which is something that the animal farmers would love) - which would cause all sorts of ..."so meat is only for rich people? FUCK THAT!" reactions.
If you don't do those, it's just going to be imported.
If you ban imports, you're going to get a meat mafia. Meat bootleggers. The "leather underground" mafia and terrorist organization.
You may actually get to see this, since the prices are destined to shoot up eventually, since it's so unsustainable.
What is a weeks worth of Meat?
Lots of government health agencies have recommendations for protein. For example https://www.eatforhealth.gov.au/guidelines/guidelines
The actual problem is capitalism.
Most people only eat that much meat because of a combination of lobbying, advertising, education (or lack thereof, about where our food comes from, home ec, etc..) and so on which all influence and create social norms, all engineered and focused on making money for those at the top, not our health, not our well being, and definitely not those of the animals.
The horror that is factory farming only exists because of profit motives. Remove the profit motive and whole thing comes tumbling down (because it's just unsustainable).
The horror that is factory farming only exists because of profit motives. Remove the profit motive and whole thing comes tumbling down (because it’s just unsustainable).
Nope. The horror of factory farming exists because herding/ranching exists. It's the descendant, the result of the transition from extensive herding (which is also horrible) to intensive herding (which is obviously horrible). The CAFOs are the ones making profits by economies of scale. Most of the animal products are from CAFOs. End those and it's going to get really surprising :)
Profits existed way before, with pastoralism. The "livestock" or "living capital" is a form of primitive accumulation, part of the formation of capitalism. The profit incentive and the GROWTH incentive goes deep in pastoralist culture. The notion that it's in any sense non-profit is absolutely incorrect.
The truly climate friendly meat has been right in front of us since the dawn of time, but it is illegal in most places and taboo in most cultures except in emergencies.
Human meat is unsustainable even if it could be allowed like some muscle donation. Adding in capitalist incentives would make "human trafficking" reach new levels horror.
Human meat is unsustainable
That's the neat part that makes it so environmentally friendly.
Roadkill? Or Soylent green?
The rich
Soylent Green requires processing for production and that is not climate friendly.
Whereever there is need for something, some assholes come and create a new sector out of it to milk it as much as possible before moving onto the next thing. Pretty much the same story with responsibly sourced or net carbon zero emissions certificates etc. Some people are making shit loads of money out of it, while probably serving nothing (or barely anything) for the original purpose but just making it seem like they do. And worse they are probably delaying real solutions by at least a couple decades.
Why is this articles content all blurry?
Strange, doesn't show up like for me. I don't think there's a paywall on this article, so I'm not sure why it'd be showing up like that. Maybe a browser issue? I'm using Firefox, what browser are you using?
Lab-grown meat needs to become the norm, and cow-based meat needs to become a specialty food.
Yep