According to a report published on Monday by Farm Animal Investment Risk & Return, lawmakers around the world are considering new taxes on meat, claiming such taxes would curb greenhouse gas emissions from livestock.
Conveniently, governments making more money by taxing their citizens will supposedly curb global warming.
FAIRR’s report claims that countries like Denmark, Germany, and Sweden are considering passing new livestock-related tax legislation.
Supposedly, a meat tax would reduce carbon emissions and save the world from global warming. That’s the cover story anyway.
According to the Food & Agriculture Organization, greenhouse gas emissions from livestock account for about fourteen percent of the world’s total emissions.
Germany, one of the countries whose lawmakers are considering the meat tax, emitted a total of about 777,905 kts of CO2 in 2015, according to the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. Denmark emitted 36,908 kts and Sweden emitted 42,495 kts.
Consider that livestock accounts for just a tiny part of those emissions and compare those figures with China’s whopping 2015 CO2 emissions of nearly 11 million kts, and then consider how a meat tax would only limit consumer intake at a tiny fraction at best.
Obviously, the meat tax proponents are using global warming scare tactics as a means to collect money through unfair and unnecessary federal money grabs.
Bloomberg reports:
Meat could encounter the same fate as tobacco, carbon and sugar, which are currently taxed in 180, 60, and 25 jurisdictions around the world, respectively, according to a report Monday from investor group the FAIRR (Farm Animal Investment Risk & Return) Initiative. Lawmakers in Denmark, Germany, China and Sweden have discussed creating livestock-related taxes in the past two years, though the idea has encountered strong resistance.
Greenhouse gas emissions from livestock are about 14.5 percent of the world’s total, according to the Food & Agriculture Organization, which projects global meat consumption to increase 73 percent by mid-century, amid growing demand from economies like India and China. That could result in as much as $1.6 trillion in health and environmental costs for the global economy by 2050, according to FAIRR, a London-based initiative created by Coller Capital.
“Investors are starting to consider this in a similar way to how they have considered climate risk,” said Rosie Wardle, who manages investor engagements at FAIRR. “It’s kind of accepted now that we need to address livestock production and consumption to meet that 2 degree global warming limit.”
FAIRR’s sustainable protein engagement plan, currently supported by 57 investors with $2.3 trillion under management, plans to ask 16 major food multinationals this year to “future proof” their supply chains by diversifying their protein sources.
Supporters of the meat tax point to sugar taxes as a fine example to follow. Supposedly wanting to help public health, Mexico imposed a sugary drink tax in 2014. Health officials there claimed sugar taxes would help improve public health.
But first of all, it isn’t the government’s job to “improve” public health through taxes. Secondly, the sugar scare is based entirely on the assumption that people simply consume too many calories. Any high-calorie food or drink, in their minds, is therefore “unhealthy.”
Ultimately, the supposed decline in consumption of sugary beverages in Mexico following imposition of the tax was exceedingly minimal.
Bloomberg continues:
The possible impact of a meat tax could be similar to sugar taxes. While sugar taxes aimed at fighting obesity in the U.S. have faced some resistance, similar levies have been implemented in 18 countries and six U.S. cities, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence. When Mexico imposed a special tax in 2014 on sugary drinks, it lowered per capita consumption of those beverages by 6 percent in 2014, 8 percent in 2015 and 11 percent in the first half of 2016, according to Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health.
So the sugar tax is a terrible example for legislatures to follow.
The Journal explains how the consumption “reduction” figures were accounted for:
According to figures from the Mexican government’s National Institute for Public Health, sales of beverages affected by the tax actually increased, in comparison with the six-year period before it was introduced.
In 2014, sales increased by 6.4%, and in 2015, by 7%.
However, after adjusting for population growth, the relative increase in sales was 1.6% in 2014, and 1.1% in 2015.
And adding adjustments for seasonal trends (differences in weather from year to year), economic growth, and so on, the Institute claimed that in real terms, sales of the fizzy drinks actually fell by 6% in 2014, and 8% in 2015.
This echoes research, cited by the Irish Heart Foundation’s Cliona Loughnane, and published in the British Medical Journal in January 2016.
It found, in short, that in the 12 months after the introduction of the tax, consumption of drinks affected by it went down by an average of 6%, compared to what could have been expected if the tax were not implemented, and after adjusting for factors such as weather, economic growth, changes in population structure, and so on.
In other words, when surveyors learned that consumption actually increased after the tax was imposed, they just kept adjusting for “weather, economic growth, changes in population structure, and so on” until the results supported their claims.
“International evidence shows,” The Irish Beverage Council said in a report on the subject, “that additional taxation on sugar-sweetened drinks does not achieve the public health objectives of reducing incidence of obesity, overweight and related illnesses.”
Taxation for “public health” and “livestock-related carbon emissions” are both a total farce.
If FAIRR’s investor engagements manager Rosie Wardle truly believed that livestock poses a “climate risk” that can be avoided through taxation, she wouldn’t have used such wishy-washy language when promoting it.
“It’s kind of accepted now,” she claimed, “that we need to address livestock production and consumption to meet that 2 degree global warming limit.”
“Kind of accepted now” by whom? Where are the scholarly reports that indicate a potential (but doubtful) curb in consumption brought on by taxes would have any effect at all? Denmark and Sweden aren’t even in the list of the top forty emitters. How much, exactly, does livestock account for what meager amounts of CO2 they do produce?
Where’s the evidence that a hardly noticeable decline in demand would have any effect whatsoever on supply?
This is all part of an effort to convince people that governments must act because the fate of the world is at stake. It’s just an excuse the feds can use to get their hands even deeper into your pockets.
If it’s not your “health,” it’s the planet’s. If it’s not your country’s demand for livestock, it’s India’s. If it’s not your problem, its your grandchildren’s. If it’s not sugar, it’s meat.
These environmentalists seek to tax your behavior, and they’ll use any silly old excuse to justify it.
FAIR’s own website admits:
The policy White Paper, entitled The Livestock Levy, warns that the growing evidence of the meat industry’s harmful impacts on both human health and the environment make the imposition of a ‘behavioural (or sin) tax’ on meat products increasingly likely if countries are to fulfil their commitments to the Paris Agreement. Countries including Denmark and Sweden have already debated a meat tax.
The report examines the increasing use of ‘behavioural taxes’ by governments on products such as sugar, carbon and tobacco. It finds that meat is on the same path that led these goods to become the target of stand-alone taxes
Are more “behavioral” taxes like this one sure to come?
Tell us what you think, and sound off in the comments below.
from The Federalist Papers http://bitly.com/2zbQPVZ
via IFTTT Coming Soon: Big Tax on “Meat” to Stop Climate Change http://bitly.com/2zbQPVZ