It’s been a while now since the war against meat emerged as another major area of focus for climate fundamentalists.
Under the circumstances, therefore, it was no surprise to read this.
Climate labels on fast-food menus can help steer people in the US away from ordering beef — the food with the worst impact on the climate — and towards meals that are better for the planet, according to new research.
Food systems contribute roughly a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, and much of it coming from raising cows and other livestock. As people look for climate solutions to rapidly cut down their greenhouse gas emissions, “one of the biggest changes we can make is reducing the red meat we consume,” says Julia Wolfson, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and one of the researchers behind the new study. (The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is supported by Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies.)
The framing of the story is worth noting.
We read that “people [are] look [ing] for climate solutions to rapidly cut down their greenhouse gas emissions.”
That’s a phrase designed to prod the reader to ask him or herself what they should be doing to reduce their greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions.
But if a large number of people (that’s the implication) are looking for such solutions, it’s also worth adding some commentary that would shed some light on how hard they are looking, and what are they prepared to give up in order to achieve that supposedly virtuous but, in the broader context (China, etc.), pointless, objective.
Moreover, if this multitude of aspiring GHG fighters are indeed looking, and they don’t already know about the contribution livestock farming makes to global GHG emissions, they have not been looking very hard. Climate fundamentalists have been noisily making the connection between meat and a burning/freezing/flooding/hurricane-ravaged planet for, as mentioned above, quite some time. Or maybe these seekers do know about that connection but don’t care enough about it to cut down on their cheeseburgers.
Back to Bloomberg:
In search of ways to shift consumer behavior, Wolfson and colleagues at Johns Hopkins, Harvard University and the University of Michigan created an experiment to test two types of climate labels on fast-food menus. The researchers specifically targeted fast food because it’s a major source of beef consumption in the US. More than one-third of Americans consume fast food on a given day.
The result of this experiment?
“The main takeaway is that both labels effectively increased the proportion of participants who ordered a sustainable item,” says Wolfson, “but the most effective was the high climate impact label on the red meat item.”
To her credit, Wolfson highlights the fact that this experiment took the form of an online survey. She stressed the importance of running such tests on a real-world basis. The results, I suspect, might well be different. A spot of online virtue-signaling is one thing, but real life is quite another. . . .
But also note this:
Kristie Ebi, a climate and health professor at the University of Washington who was also not involved in the study, sees the result as a sign “that with more information, the American public could make better choices in terms of healthiness and in terms of sustainability.” More research is needed to determine the most effective climate labeling, and Ebi suggested looking to the history of warning labels on cigarettes which have since “been improved in terms of their effectiveness.”
Leaving aside the question of whether such choices are “better” in the sense of making any real difference to the climate, Ebi’s reference to warning labels on cigarette packs is revealing. When it comes to neo-prohibitionism, the slippery slope is real enough.
Climate-warning labels on foods such as beef would be a device designed to keep the converted on the right path, and to persuade others to follow their example. They are also intended to stigmatize such foods, and to pave the way, first for mandatory labeling, and then for taxation at a level that would in turn be relentlessly increased in the interests, allegedly, of the planet. The endgame? To transform beef into a relatively rarely eaten luxury. The motive (in many cases)? The opportunities for social control, virtue-signaling and, of course, the all-too-common pleasure that too many people have always taken in denying pleasure to others and, sometimes, even to themselves.