We all need food to survive

That is still true when climate changes

Something remarkable happened last night. A car swooped into the far side of the fence, leaving a large gap behind. Our ranch owner Bob only found out by sunrise, but I had already had my three hours of sleep, so I was wide awake to witness it all. Cowboy Jack and Bob showed up at the fence. They had a quick look at the situation. Jack said: “Let’s run a few poles into the ground!” Bob replied: “but … we could also install a tall grass eco-fence, right?” “That wouldn’t keep the animals inside, would it?” replied Jack with a puzzled gaze. “Doesn’t matter if you get a carbon credit for it,” replied Bob and he started laughing. When the joke was digested, Bob rejoined: “All right, let’s get on with it.”

Our cowboys still have basic common sense. They will have a glance at a situation (broken fence), think of what target needs to be accomplished to fix it (contain animals) and devise a solution that has measurable impact towards achieving that target (animals remain contained). However, there is an increasing number of contexts in the public domain where the above link between the proposed solution and the realized impact is missing. Animals seem to be at the center of one such area: climate action.

Broken fencing isn’t that great to contain animals. If only we extended that logic to other issues, like climate change mitigation. Photo by CocaKolaLips.

In the name of “fighting imminent, irreversible climate change,” Denmark has imposed a tax on “breaking wind.” The proposed tax levies Danish farmers $96 per cow to “compensate for their burps.” Notably, New Zealand, another major dairy producing country, had similar plans that only were shelved after a shift in politics, as a result of the most recent election. Some news outlets, such as CNN, hail such actions as they punish cows for “the planet-heating emissions they generate.”

(I guess that’s another example of activism journalism, in this case from CNN’s Hanna Ziady. I’ve expanded upon another one before, worthwhile checking out while you subscribe)

Some readers may disagree, but let’s assume in what follows that climate change will lead to an imminent catastrophe if left unmitigated and that it is primarily caused by greenhouse gas emissions. If true, we have little time to act and we can absolutely not afford to take actions that fail to have an effect.

In other words, it is imperative to identify those actions that will have maximal impact. Is that true for Denmark’s climate plan, though? Recall that cow farts are accused of being “planet-heating” because of the methane gas they contain. A quick glance at reports from several government sources who break down greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, such as the US EPA, reveals that carbon dioxide makes up almost two thirds of GHG emissions, while methane barely amounts to 11%. A further back-of-the-envelope calculation teaches us that Denmark’s methane emissions amount to 0.17% of the global total. Therefore, Denmark’s methane climate action could maximally reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 0.02% and that number would only be attained if Denmark eliminated its entire livestock. The burp tax does not guarantee that Denmark will reduce its cattle at all, though. It may simply lead to price increases. In summary, we can only conclude that this plan will fail to have any measurable impact on climate as a whole.

While the burp tax’s impact on climate will be negligible, it will have a measurable impact on farm economics. Some small farms that are already struggling to stay afloat, may well go belly up once they are taxed for their every single cow. Also, Danish meat and dairy farmers will inevitably try and pass this cost on to their customers, which will lead to increased meat and dairy prices. The latter will be felt by end consumers outside Danish borders too. Do you buy Danish Blue cheese? Then you had better prepare for price hikes.

So why does Denmark enact this tax? This is where fact meets speculation, but let’s start with fact. The Danish coalition announced the tax “as a means to meet its climate goals”. So, let’s interpret this correctly. In deference to the Paris Climate Agreement, which only stipulates general, vague goals, the European Union set out to translate those opaque objectives into bloc-wide, quantitative commitments. To carve out a path to reach those bloc-level targets, countries needed to analyze how to meet their portion of them. In Denmark’s case, the country has concluded that the way to achieve its EU climate goals, is to … “rewild.” Rewilding is accomplished by taxing farmers, “the proceeds of which will be used to support farmers’ green transition,” while the country will also invest billions “in reforestation and establishing wetlands.” In other words, farmers will be taxed and then that money will be used to push them off of their land. This is presented as a double win for the planet, since the forest will sequester carbon, while there will be no more “planet-hurting” methane emissions. At least not in Denmark, that is. However, this reasoning fails to pass most basic test of logic on many levels.

At first, have you ever farted yourself? I am a good horse with a healthy digestion system, so I for sure have. I trust you have too. Then, may I ask you the following: Have you ever farted in the corner of your stable and then tried to keep the gas right there, in that corner? If you have, you will have noticed that even if you walked to the opposite corner, at some point the smell caught up with you. The gas will inevitably dissipate. You really can’t fart into the corner of your room and expect it to stay there. So why do we make such assumptions about climate?

Figure 1. Greenhouse gas emissions 1990-2020 (mt) for the countries discussed in this article. Data source: Our World in Data.

Climate is a global phenomenon. Denmark’s emissions do not stay in the skies above it. Likewise, it is affected by emissions made in other places. So let’s have a look at contributors to global emissions. In Figure 1, we plot the history of greenhouse gas emissions, according to Our World in Data, with respect to the countries discussed here. If we need drastic action to tackle imminent danger from climate change, we need to address the largest emitters. The picture here is pretty clear: the largest emitter is China, followed by the US and India. While the United States has taken impressive efforts to reduce its emissions, the achieved reduction is minimal compared to the actual increases from China and India. Moreover, those increases are largely caused by power generation from coal (not shown in Figure 1).

If all of the United States’ combined efforts to reduce its GHG emissions are merely a drop in the water compared to China and India’s increases, then what to expect from countries like Denmark or New Zealand? Do you see their emissions in Figure 1? Hint: they are actually plotted there. The point should be clear by now: climate is a global phenomenon. As long as the world’s biggest emitters keep emitting more, anything an already vanishingly small emitter like Denmark does, is completely ineffective to mitigate climate change.

Even if we had a global agreement in which the largest emitters would be actually willing to reduce their emissions, the measures globally agreed upon would also have to make sense from a global perspective, balancing with global economies and supply chains. That means that not every region should be bound to proportional reductions set by higher level targets. I trust that a landmass of the same area as Denmark in the Saharan desert or in the Amazonian rain-forest has lower anthropogenic GHG emissions. But those regions do not supply food. Denmark and New Zealand both have a major dairy industry because their land and climate are very suitable for dairy farming. It really makes no sense to cascade down quota on such regions that have a disproportionate input in the food supply chain.

Figure 2. Greenhouse gas emissions 1990-2020, unmodified from Our World in Data. CC-BY license.

If we are in an urgent climate emergency, we need to analyze emissions and look for areas that lead to the most significant reductions. Here, “areas” can be geographies, but also economic sectors. So which sectors are contributing most to GHG emissions? Our World in Data again provides the answer, shown in Figure 2. Electricity and heat are by far the largest contributors to GHG emissions, followed by transportation. If we really need to take urgent action against climate change, the number one area of focus should be to invest massively in energy-dense, carbon free electricity production. Right now, the only truly energy dense power generation solution we have, is nuclear. Yet instead of investment into truly reliable, energy-dense solutions, Oceania and the Americas are investing in unreliable solar and wind solutions that require massive land acreage and need to be backed up, in practice mostly by fossil fuels, while China and India are constructing additional coal based power plants. Also, Oceania and the Americas are pushing changes to the agricultural system, which are poised to only have a very moderate impact. It seems that the push to intervene in agriculture is intended to bring about changes in our lifestyle rather than to have a meaningful impact on climate.

Just by analyzing Figure 2, it should be clear that if we wanted to reduce GHG emissions significantly, we could do so by taking measures that do have a sizable impact. We might even get to an acceptable level of emissions reduction without changes in our lifestyle at all. However, let’s assume for a minute that climate change is so menacingly imminent that we do need to make changes to our lifestyles. Then the first question to ask would be: which components in our present lives can we do without?

The answer to that question is rather straightforward. If we need to eliminate components from our lifestyle, we should start by looking at things that are not essential for survival. For instance, private jets could be made illegal tomorrow. They have a massive a carbon footprint and most people would not miss them. Another good example are AI data centers. By and large, we lived without their assistance until 2020, yet AI data centers are projected to consume up to a quarter of the total energy demand in the US by 2030. If we face an imminent climate disaster, should we let that happen?

Likewise, most of us have lived without smartphones until fifteen years ago. Smartphones have a huge environmental burthen and the constant energy consumption for charging and communication with all of these mobile devices, produces just as much GHG emissions as the entire airline industry. Sure, these devices could, in theory, be powered by electricity with a low carbon footprint, but as we have seen, we don’t have that much clean electricity right now and governments seem to have priorities other than investing in energy dense technologies. All of these are concessions to our lifestyle that we could reasonably make to mitigate climate change. Yet the one area targeted by media and futile measures is essential for our survival: food. It is the absolute last place to reasonably make a lifestyle concession in. Even at a less elementary level, good food makes life better. It is total insanity to attack our food supply chain, while there are much more obvious places to make cuts.

If we take the climate emergency seriously, we should take actions that have most impact. Yet the narratives emanated from Western governments and media do the opposite. They launch concerted attacks on certain greenhouse gas emitters, while giving much larger emitters an absolute free pass. If we are reading about “planet-heating cows,” we should definitely be reading at least as frequently about “planet-heating smartphones.” To mitigate the climate emergency, we should read about proposals to ban QR codes and digital currencies, but I don’t see any of that. Instead, we read about insane proposals to reduce urban meat and dairy consumption to zero. Similarly, in one of its most recent communications, the World Economic Forum advocates to limit washing clothes. They propose in all earnest to wash jeans pants only once a month. I have reported on the WEF’s founder, Klaus Schwab, and his potential motivations before. If the WEF’s emperor proposes not wash clothes, that can only mean that he has none.

(If you don’t remember, the WEF is a key connector piece in a web of directional dysphoria. Check it out and subscribe!)

One thing is sure, though: a reduction in the number of times people wash their clothes is not the most impactful measure to take to mitigate global climate change. If we want to avoid a climate disaster, we cannot afford to take such scurrilous measures. At the same time, we cannot afford to starve, so the food supply chain should be the absolute last economic sector to dismantle.

I like my food. I also like a change from time to time. Hay is good, but I appreciate the occasional apple! Good food is one thing that makes life worth living. We will not have it taken away from us. If climate action is urgent, let’s take actions in areas that matter. But please don’t blame us animals for human actions.

I will have my food and if you try to take it away, I will not just use my hind legs. I will kick to kill. Trust me, I will still be able to kick, even if the world is 1.5 degrees hotter.

(To the interested reader: I have recently been posting short comments and preview snippets on X. A warm welcome to every reader who joins the herd there!)