The Green New Deal Will No Longer Have Meat on the Menu
Jose Nino
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Democrat’s recently unveiled Green New Deal might get in the way of your favorite carnivorous treats.
Spearheaded by freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the Green New Deal is a government-directed plan to eliminate greenhouse gas emission through carbon taxes, confiscatory levels of taxation, and a myriad of other top-down schemes.
One of the ways the “enlightened” political class in DC wants to reduce greenhouse emissions is by cutting emissions from “farting cows”. In a section of the Green New Deal FAQ sheet that addresses the differences between reaching “100% clean and renewable” energy and “100% renewable” energy, Green New Deal advocates were quick to pin the blame on methane emissions coming from cattle. They conceded that they won’t be able to get to zero greenhouse emission because they aren’t sure that they’ll “be able to fully get rid of farting cows”.
Naturally, groups like the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) have pushed back against these claims on cattle’s impact on greenhouse emissions. Colin Woodall, NCBA senior vice president of government affairs, chimed in on the matter:
Despite all the progress we’ve made on the environmental front in recent decades, some policymakers still seem to think targeting U.S. beef producers and consumers will make a huge impact on global emissions.
Claims that cattle contribute significantly to global warming are dubious at best. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that direct greenhouse gas emissions coming from cattle and their manure are only 2 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
Virginia Tech and USDA-ARSÂ have also countered the livestock argument. Their research came to the conclusion that if all livestock were eliminated from production agriculture U.S. greenhouse gas emissions would only drop by 2.6 percent or 0.36 percent globally.
Blaming beef for increasing greenhouse emissions is not a novel concept.
The UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) published Livestock’s Long in 2006, arguing that meat production contributed to 18 percent of all greenhouse-gas emissions.
However, such an assertion was challenged by Frank Mitloehner at the University of California at Davis. Mitloehner countered by claiming that the FAO’s original analysis yielded an “apples-and-oranges analogy that truly confused the issue” and led many people to believe that meat production produced a higher output of greenhouse emissions than transportation.
Sadly, Green New Deal proponents don’t care about facts and only care about policies that line up special interests’ pockets, while consolidating their own political power.
If that means taxing your juicy steak to oblivion, so be it.
Middle America’ s opinions and preferences are afterthoughts to control freak politicians.
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