Sonia Sodha: Sin taxes on meat or flying won’t change a climate hypocrite like me. Rationing might.
Rationing and setting a population-level limit on meat consumption would create huge incentives for companies to invest more in the production of things such as environmentally friendly, lab-grown meat.
SONIA SODHA: ‘There are those admirable saints who really do practise what they preach, but I’d bet most of those who profess to care about the planet are just as hypocritical as me. I don’t think it makes us bad people, just typically, fallibly human, lacking the willpower to do the stuff we know we ought… Before I say any more about the lifestyle changes required to avoid catastrophic climate change, I’m going to hold my hands up. I’m a climate hypocrite…
In the UK, we’ve already done the (relatively) painless stuff – closing coal power stations – when it comes to reducing emissions. The next frontier is stuff that is either expensive – ditching gas boilers and switching to electric cars – or requires us to change the way we live. That will certainly involve eating less meat, the production of which accounts for 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than all the world’s cars, ships, trains and planes put together. Beef is by far the worst culprit: one study recommended cutting global consumption by 90%.
It’s naive to think that we can achieve these sorts of lifestyle shifts by imploring people to do more. I already know we’re fast approaching a catastrophic climate tipping point and yet I’m just not very good at forgoing a steak, particularly when I know plenty of others won’t be either. The power of nudge is also limited here: shoving the steak further down the menu isn’t going to make me less likely to order it. So public policy inevitably ends up with sin taxes as the go-to policy lever for trying to get us to switch away from the bad stuff. Sure enough, a meat tax has been mooted…
Rationing to tackle the climate crisis could be given a modern-day makeover. People could be allocated polluting credits to cover activities such as meat eating and flying that they can sell and buy in an online marketplace. If you’re short of cash, or not that bothered about eating meat or flying abroad, you can feel smug as you sell your credits to someone who is, which makes this far more equitable than green taxes. And setting a population-level limit on something such as meat consumption would create huge incentives for companies to invest more in the production of things such as environmentally friendly, lab-grown meat’. SOURCE…
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