Whether or not we believe in central government, the people who rule over us affect every aspect of our lives. Some leaders have chosen to ignore global warming until we are late in the day. Moreover, the problem has been a long time coming and we can’t blame the current lot for causing it. However, Bjorn Lomborg thinks some of their misguided policies are moving things in the wrong direction.
Bjorn Lomborg is Concerned About Their Misguided Policies
The youthful leader of his own think tank Copenhagen Consensus Center is a committed vegan. He thinks human carnivores should be banished from restaurants like smokers. “If they want to eat meat, they can do it outside the restaurant,” he says.
However, he does not want to ban meat, even though some sources claim “eliminating meat consumption could cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 50% or more”. That’s massive, he says. It’s also massively misleading. To achieve that reduction we would have to stop all forms of livestock farming.
That means no milk, eggs, honey, meat, poultry, seafood, fur, leather, wool, gelatin, and much else, he points out. However, the total climate benefit would still only be 4.3% fewer emissions, he adds after surveying peer-reviewed studies. Therefore attempts to ban beef would, in his vegan mind be misguided food policies.
But Bjorn Lomborg does not stop there because this still overstates the effect. This is because of the ‘age-old phenomenon of economic rebound’. Vegan diets are slightly cheaper, he says. “But saved money will be spent on other goods and services that cause additional greenhouse gas emissions.”
Quantifying the Effect of Eliminating Meat
Based on calculations using average Western food budgets, Bjorn thinks enforcing vegan diets would actually only reduce our personal emissions by around 2%. We are not missionaries for particular dietary preferences. However, we found this an interesting illustration of economic rebounds arising from misguided policies.
We can think of certain other policies producing dysfunctional results based on inaccurate data …
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Preview Image: Landfill Site in Dryden, Ontario, Canada
