Food Taxes to Stop Global Warming?

Food Taxes to Stop Global Warming?

UK Researchers: Tax Food to Reduce Climate Change

November 19, 2016 By Brian Thomas  

Researchers at Oxford University have proposed implementing a massive food tax on carbon rich foods, foods that are often also protein rich, such as meat and dairy.
“Levying greenhouse gas taxes on food commodities could, if appropriately designed, be a health-promoting climate policy in high-income countries,” the study’s abstract asserts.  “As well as in most low- and middle-income countries.”
So high government taxes are these researcher’s answer to unhealthy eating habits and climate change together. That’s quite convenient. Forget nutritional education, and nevermind the right to choose what you’d like to eat. People are too stupid for freedom. They need fiscal persuasion.

Here’s a segment of the study:

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.

Climate change has become an excuse for stealing more money from people who earned it. Scientists will admit that carbon emissions from agriculture do not compare with that of industry, specifically China’s industries.
The Oxford researcher’s “health-promoting” policies don’t focus on which foods are actually unhealthy (carbon and protein rich=bad?),  but rather which foods their research has deemed “carbon intensive.”
The study is unashamedly promotional of freedom-limiting policies. Oh, and also, they’re not going to work.
There are around 2.5 million alcohol related deaths, worldwide annually, and about 6 million tobacco related deaths.
These substances are taxed heavily, yet taxation has failed to curb use and instead lowers the quality of living of already overtaxed populations.
Expect more of the same if food taxes are implemented.
Taxation is neither about the health of the people nor the health of the planet. It’s about revenue for governments that can make no money on their own yet wish to spend frivolously on programs engineered to control the people and restrict their freedoms.