No, the Government Isn’t Coming for Your Burger—but Maybe It Should Be

There are some good reasons why most policymakers have concrete plans to phase out coal power plants but take only occasional, haphazard steps to limit the growth in the number of farmed animals. Meat, milk, and eggs can be an important source of protein and nutrients. Increasing access to animal products can change lives and livelihoods in poorer countries like Burundi, where the average person eats less than seven pounds of meat per year, compared to nearly 300 pounds a year in Hong Kong or the USA. While it’s hard to quantify animal products’ cultural or gustatory value, it is clear that replacing a slice of hot pepperoni pizza with tofu is not as straightforward as changing the source of the invisible electrons that flow through a wall socket. Even in a best-case scenario, where humans cut emissions to net-zero by 2050 and global heating is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expects agricultural emissions to fall by no more than 41 percent, with negative emissions elsewhere making up for continued increases in meat consumption.       

And there are real political consequences from powerful agricultural industries and farmers’ lobbies that oppose policies that would reduce the number of livestock machines, or limit their ability to build polluting infrastructure. In the Netherlands, the backlash against livestock reduction goals has been fierce. Protesting farmers have been blocking roads with tractors, spraying manure around the agriculture minister’s neighborhood, and elevating the populist, right-wing BoerBurgerBeweging (Farmer-Citizen Movement) into the largest party in the national Senate. Given the success the right wing in the U.S. has had fearmongering about nonexistent meat restrictions, it’s clear that claiming the government’s going to take away people’s burgers is an effective political strategy that climate-minded policymakers will have to contend with.

Nevertheless, as the world keeps warming, it will become clear that political leaders’ climate pledges require that we phase down all sorts of polluting machines: not just the metal ones that burn fossil fuels but also the ones that have brains, and hearts, and use up three-quarters of the world’s agricultural land, and overheat the planet. And given the important contribution animal agriculture makes to economies from the Argentine Cerrado to the Dairy Belt of the American Midwest—and the political power of farmers—discussions of a “just green transition” should analyze the future of ranching as thoroughly as that of coal mining.