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Feeding cows seaweed cuts 99% of greenhouse gas emissions from their burps

independent.co.uk

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Re: Feeding cows seaweed cuts 99% of greenhouse gas emissions from their burps

#81

Post by jakobegger »

avar wrote: post #66
jakobegger wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some externalities are hard to tax. For example, consumption of red meat probably increases cancer risk [1]. We can't introduce a tax on cancer, but we still want to reduce the occurrence of cancer, so all that's left is taxing red meat. [1]: http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/

First of all you can tax cancer, you make people who engage in voluntary cancer-inducing activities such as smoking pay higher health care costs. But secondly that WHO page is frequently cited by people who apparently haven't understood the numbers behind it. It's not worthwhile to tax meat as a cancer risk because the health impact is a rounding error. According to the WHO: > about 34 000 cancer deaths per year worl…

That red meat is carcinogenic was just an example for illustrating my point that externalities are hard /impossible to tax.

I could just as well have said that red meat increases risk of heart attacks, red meat increases choleserol, raising cattle for meat uses lots of fresh water in areas that don't have enough, that a lot of feed is required to produce very little meat...

It just happens that one externality (methane emissions) is easily measured, but all the other externalities of meat consumption are not, hence a tax makes sense.

Re: Feeding cows seaweed cuts 99% of greenhouse gas emissions from their burps

#82

Post by avar »

sparrc wrote: post #79
avar wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing needs to be taxed based on calorie produced. For the purposes of sustainability you tax externalities. Whether that's releasing carbon into the atmosphere, or whatever it costs to fix the land or water you're polluting. If you're polluting as much as your neighbor but producing fewer calories you'll make less money, so market forces will take care of that and you'll be more likely to go out of business. There…

Right, my point is that producing any type of meat consumes excessive amounts of land vs other forms of producing food, I guess what I'm asking is: how do you classify 'land' as an externality?

With per-acre property taxes. If you need 10x the land to produce a kg of beef v.s. a kg of lentils you'll pay 10x the property taxes, which'll be worked into the price of your product.

The question of e.g. water consumption or pollution is a separate question. It's possible to pollute a lot in a very small area, and that should be priced accordingly.

Re: Feeding cows seaweed cuts 99% of greenhouse gas emissions from their burps

#83

Post by avar »

jakobegger wrote: post #81
avar wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all you can tax cancer, you make people who engage in voluntary cancer-inducing activities such as smoking pay higher health care costs. But secondly that WHO page is frequently cited by people who apparently haven't understood the numbers behind it. It's not worthwhile to tax meat as a cancer risk because the health impact is a rounding error. According to the WHO: > about 34 000 cancer deaths per year worl…

That red meat is carcinogenic was just an example for illustrating my point that externalities are hard /impossible to tax. I could just as well have said that red meat increases risk of heart attacks, red meat increases choleserol, raising cattle for meat uses lots of fresh water in areas that don't have enough, that a lot of feed is required to produce very little meat... It just happens that one externality (metha…

You're right that it's impossible at the micro-level, but things don't need to be taxed down to that level.

E.g. are we going to tax farmer John more than farmer Bob because John feels he needs to smoke cigarettes while farming (and thus makes some small extra contribution to CO^2 emissions), no. Measuring things at that level would be silly.

But it's easy enough to get sufficiently right for the purposes of discouraging externalities and encouraging innovation. Farms, power plants, cargo ships etc. are all major contributors to pollution, and the taxes they pay can be calculated as a function of regular inspections, which all those industries need to undergo anyway.

Re: Feeding cows seaweed cuts 99% of greenhouse gas emissions from their burps

#84

Post by sparrc »

avar wrote: post #82
sparrc wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, my point is that producing any type of meat consumes excessive amounts of land vs other forms of producing food, I guess what I'm asking is: how do you classify 'land' as an externality?

With per-acre property taxes. If you need 10x the land to produce a kg of beef v.s. a kg of lentils you'll pay 10x the property taxes, which'll be worked into the price of your product. The question of e.g. water consumption or pollution is a separate question. It's possible to pollute a lot in a very small area, and that should be priced accordingly.

Fair enough, I see the logic behind what you're saying, but taxing that as an externality would require a massive change in the way farmland is managed and taxed in most of the western world.

I'm not saying this is right, but farming is such a difficult and low-margin occupation that most countries have policies of helping farmers and having low to no taxes (even to the point of giving cashback in the EU) on land classified as "farmland"

So "sin taxes" would be a way of targeting some of the biggest problems (meat) without completely restructuring the food and taxation system around the world.

Re: Feeding cows seaweed cuts 99% of greenhouse gas emissions from their burps

#85

Post by avar »

sparrc wrote: post #84
avar wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With per-acre property taxes. If you need 10x the land to produce a kg of beef v.s. a kg of lentils you'll pay 10x the property taxes, which'll be worked into the price of your product. The question of e.g. water consumption or pollution is a separate question. It's possible to pollute a lot in a very small area, and that should be priced accordingly.

Fair enough, I see the logic behind what you're saying, but taxing that as an externality would require a massive change in the way farmland is managed and taxed in most of the western world. I'm not saying this is right, but farming is such a difficult and low-margin occupation that most countries have policies of helping farmers and having low to no taxes (even to the point of giving cashback in the EU) on land cla…

The "sin taxes" would just be another and less efficient form of restructuring. You'd reduce meat consumption, thus screwing over some polluting farmers, but also equally screwing over other farmers who pollute less to produce the same product.

But on the topic of say EU farming subsidies: You'd still raise the taxes dramatically to price the externality of pollution, but could just on top of that decide to give tax rebates that would amount to the same net subsidy.

The reason it's important to do it that way is two-fold.:

First you want to as a matter of public policy see how much you're actually paying for this subsidy. E.g. corporations in the EU usually pay a reduced VAT rate via rebates, we don't pretend that the concept of VAT doesn't apply to them. We could see that we like farming so much that we're spending however many billions of EUR/yr on offloading pollution on future generations.

Secondly because such a tax subsidy could be structured to give more money to farmers if they pollute less, instead of them coming out even if they continue doing what they're doing now. Right now a farmer who releases way more CO^2 than his neighbor doesn't pay any more taxes, maybe you'd like to keep it that way for political reasons, but we could at least structure it so that his neighbor makes money by polluting less.

Re: Feeding cows seaweed cuts 99% of greenhouse gas emissions from their burps

#86

Post by theptip »

sparrc wrote: post #79
avar wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing needs to be taxed based on calorie produced. For the purposes of sustainability you tax externalities. Whether that's releasing carbon into the atmosphere, or whatever it costs to fix the land or water you're polluting. If you're polluting as much as your neighbor but producing fewer calories you'll make less money, so market forces will take care of that and you'll be more likely to go out of business. There…

Right, my point is that producing any type of meat consumes excessive amounts of land vs other forms of producing food, I guess what I'm asking is: how do you classify 'land' as an externality?

I agree with what avar is saying above and in the sibling thread.

> producing any type of meat consumes excessive amounts of land vs other forms of producing food

I think this is quite different from CO2 and pollution, which I'd agree are true externalities. I'm not sure I follow " how do you classify 'land' as an externality" though. Why is it an externality? It is a good that has a price.

It sounds like you're believe that there's something inherently bad about meat consuming more land to produce than other types of food. But I think to first approximation, the free market just sorts that one out; if there were other uses for that land that were more profitable on a per-acre basis, then you'd expect land-owners to convert to those uses.

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