The Problem With Eating Less Meat

If someone is not a meat eater, they are probably a flexitarian:

Flexitarians though, have a dilemma.

Animal Economics

If your burger dinner was chicken instead of beef, then your carbon footprint plunged by 80%. However, the typical chicken gives us 1.7 kilograms of meat while we get 360 kilograms from a cow. Consequently, the tradeoff could be 200 million chickens for 900.000 cows. Similary, leaving beef for fish, as a pescetarian (a great word) you would be killing much more seafood:

Viewed slightly differently, the tradeoff for 80 kilograms of meat a year is almost one-sixth of a cow or 40 chickens. As a result, elevated demand could spur the number of chickens.

But then, reducing emissions and also a chicken’s welfare, we have to grow them faster and bigger:

To all of this, we should consider what a cow consumes:

Also though, emphasized during the COP conferences, we can ask how much developing countries should sacrifice:

The Burp Tax

One solution could be a burp tax. Starting during 2030, Denmark’s tax on emissions from cows, sheep, and pigs will be a 300 Danish kroner per ton tax (approximately $43). More than doubling by 2035, the package included a tax rebate.

Again though, a solution might not be as easy as it sounds. Searching for methods of methane measurement, I can see why we need to wait for 2030. Currently, the science, ranging from satellite measurements using sprectrometers to cow breath is inexact. After dealing with the complexities, I wonder if Denmark will just use cow counts?

Recognizing the complexity and the cost, New Zealand did change its mind. With the arrival of a new government, New Zealand (5 million people/10 million cattle) abandoned its methane tax plan scheduled for 2025.

Our Bottom Line: Tradeoffs

As economists, we know that decisions always take us to opportunity cost. Defined as the next best alternative, the opportunity cost of a decision is always a sacrifice. Indeed, whether looking at meat or chicken burgers, fat or skinny chickens, the developing or developed world’s diet, the opportunity cost of every green decision can be daunting.

It is not easy to be a flexitarian.

My sources and more: Thanks to Marginal Revolution for alerting me to the farm animals substack. From there, Our World in Data, WSJ, and past econlife posts here, here, and here had more of the story.