according to new research from Carnegie Mellon University, following the USDA recommendations to consume more fruits, vegetables, dairy and seafood is more harmful to the environment because those foods have relatively high resource uses and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per calorie.
I put zero trust in this sort of study. I think that market prices give you a much better indicator of resource cost. I think that environmental scientists have not business telling us that they know better.
Some of the assumptions in these types of studies are downright ridiculous (I have not read this particular study). They usually go something like “We estimate the negative externality of carbon emissions at $42.68 per ton”, not $41.32 or $45.67 but $42.68.
According to this article, the study uses a calorie for calorie approach which is also problematic. Bacon is significantly more caloricly dense than lettuce (2 strips of bacon have the same calories as 4 heads of lettuce but does anyone eat 4 heads of lettuce per serving). It would have made more sense to compare the average servings of each food (2 strips of bacon = 2 cups of lettuce) which would tell a much different story.
Don’t market prices pretty much tell us the same thing though?
Exactly.
The price per calorie of, say, lettuce is far higher than the cost per calorie of flour.
I think the calorie approach makes more sense. At the end of the day the amount of calories we need to eat to maintain our weight doesn’t change because we choose more or less calorie dense food.
Also, I think the price mechanism just shows which costs for the product are realized by the producers, and ultimately consumers of a product. If externalities aren’t priced correctly or at all, then the market signal isn’t that great.
One thing that bothers me about the environmental discourse in the US. Is the right refuses to admit there is a problem, and generally hates taxes. While left moralizes and mythologizes about the problem refusing to consider the most straight forward solutions.
So solar power is good, nuclear is bad, subsiding solar is the right policy, instead of taxing carbon, or smog production, and letting the market figure out the best way to meet demand.
It’s funny. It’s essential to shut down and export an industry for one reason, but we cannot ever allow that to happen for another.
On the one hand I often read a story saying that if American farmers don’t have access to more guest worker visas to obtain labor at the absolute cheapest rates that produce will rot in the fields, and domestic producers will get crushed by foreign competition.
On the other hand the US should unilaterally place carbon and other taxes to compensate for environmental externalities for agricultural resource use, which would definitely raise prices higher than the foreign competition, without a whole encyclopedia of “environmental policy equalizing tariffs” that no one will support.
So, at the end of the day we’ll have no crops rotting in the fields not because of importing immigrants but because we’ll tax those fields out of existence, and the farm workers will just stay put while the farm owners emigrate the operations down South.
The worst of all worlds answer scenario for policy is that you merely shuffle the deck around, with no benefit to the environment, but plenty of harm to domestic production.
I don’t think the choices here are limited to doing nothing at all, or completely destroying the US agricultural sector.
The market price of carbon is $0.
Thus, the market does a terrible job of pricing the cost of said externalities
What’s the correct price?
>$0
This isn’t quite true. See this OMB Document on the Social Cost of Carbon and the relevant executive orders and EPA regs.
The point is, you can’t do a lot these days which has large scale emissions without getting a federal government approval or permit at some point, usually lots of points. And the government is being instructed to operate as if the SCC is a cost and harm which must be overcome by the project benefits, which can include the typical market benefits of lower prices vs. lower-emissions competitors.
If you don’t pass the simulated market test in the bureacracy’s eyes, you don’t get to be in business, and the point is that the final market outcome is approximately what would occur if the government were putting this amount of carbon tax on everyone.
This is why, for example, after last year’s SCOTUS case of Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, and under the Clean Power Plan, you pretty much cannot build new or replacement coal plants in the country, and the entire U.S. coal industry recently went into near-bankruptcy and the stock prices of the major producers are down 99%. A simple and predictable tax would have been less distortionary, but ‘by hook or by crook’ is the order of the day.
Ideally, we just level a carbon tax equal to the SCC; but to claim that the EPA is enforcing this cost through regulation is fairly absurd.
Like Tom+Bret, I was surprised you didn’t explicitly compare “price per calorie” to their calculated “carbon per calorie” (which mostly agree?). I agree with your general point that price should sanity-check, if not trump, other calculations.
“Everything” began to change when we transitioned from a world where we lived in isolated outposts (where the “Great Beyond” was exciting, dangerous, and limitless) to a world where we have become “The Great Beyond” and what was once limitless are now isolated pockets of ever-diminishing resources. In earlier times our focus was outwards and with it came a fear of the wide open spaces (agoraphobia). Now our focus is inwards and we suffer from collective claustrophobia. (H/T: “The Abolition of Man”)
They are specifically talking about CO2 emissions, not resource usage in general. Since there is no market and no price for CO2 emissions, your response is a non-sequitur
If you replace meat with beans you’ll cut carbon emissions in half, at least.