Taxer la viande....

[Animal 0]

Kate Heartfield, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Tuesday, March 04, 2008
So, which government wants to be the first in Canada to put a climate tax on beef?

Anyone? Hello?

If you're taking a deep breath at the moment, and preparing to hoot with derision, remember that the small carbon tax British Columbia introduced last month would have been greeted with similar howls not long ago.

For years, the concept of tax-shifting was one that big-party politicians wouldn't touch. Finally, though, they're starting to see the logic of the idea. The whole field of economics is based on the idea that price affects choices. So, by charging people to pollute, governments can make polluting less attractive. The devil's in the details, of course, but it's an idea worth trying.

The B.C. proposal is designed to be revenue-neutral; additional tax on fossil fuels will be offset by tax breaks and rebates. A family that makes the effort to monitor the thermostat or walk to the store will find itself a little richer because of this.

But what about the family that switches to bean burgers?

According to a 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all the driving and flying that people do.

In fact, 18 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions come from meat and dairy production. Since global meat production is expected to double by 2050, this is something we should be thinking about.

Yet, when people talk about carbon taxes, they never talk about meat. This strange silence is partly attributable to a vocabulary problem: we talk about carbon dioxide so much, we forget that it's not the only greenhouse gas, or even the most dangerous one. Livestock rearing does release carbon into the atmosphere, in particular through the razing of forests (cattle need a lot of land and food). But that's nothing compared to the scary amounts of methane and nitrous oxide emitted by cattle herds and manure.

Even the Green Party of Canada talks about carbon taxes as if they were only for fossil fuels. Last year, it released a climate change plan that did include a paragraph about all the nasty stuff that's coming out of cows. But instead of recommending any economic measures, the report promised only that "a Green government will work to assist non-organic farmers who wish to transit to organics to make the switch."

Sure, that would reduce the emissions created by the manufacture of fertilizers. But as long as people are raising large numbers of cattle, we're going to have large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions.

Every political party gets weak-kneed when a smart policy seems likely to anger farmers. A smart policy would be one that recognized that this problem is too big to be curtailed by anything other than a real change in demand. Polluters have to pay.

The producers are the ones directly responsible for the pollution, so there's a good argument to be made that they're the ones who should pay. In any case, consumers would ultimately be the ones dealing with new prices, as the beef producers would be likely to pass on their extra costs. Given the fact not all meat consumed in Canada is produced here, it might make sense to just tax the product.

None of these details matter, though, because nobody's going to shift taxes onto beef any time soon. Policy decisions have as much to do with emotion as with reason. And when it comes to beef, emotions run strangely high.

Canadian politicians love nothing better than to dress up in barbecue aprons. During the mad cow scare, eating beef was portrayed as a patriotic duty. Jean Chrétien made sure to be photographed eating an Alberta steak in 2003.

The fondness for meat reminds me, in many ways, of the fondness for big cars. In 2001, when White House press secretary Ari Fleischer was asked whether Americans should change their lifestyles to consume less energy, he replied, "That's a big no. The president believes that it's an American way of life."

So is beef. And that's what's going to get in the way of clear thinking about the impact of beef on the environment.
The Canadian government is currently bragging about the fact that "from late 2007 through 2008, nearly $1.5 billion in cash payments will flow to cattle and hog producers through improved risk management programs."

Meaningful environmental policy means re-ordering our values. No government has the guts to do that. It's far easier to, say, pour public money into the production of biofuels. I'm not convinced that will stabilize the climate, but it will make a lot of farmers happy.

Kate Heartfield is a member of the Citizen's editorial board.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=62684535-dd64-451f-a2c2-2fdbb3086e69