Picture This: Putting Beef and Climate Into Perspective

Beef has gotten a very bad rap when it comes to climate, and in the popular media but is it an exaggeration to say that reducing beef consumption is a number one priority and one of the most important things we can do to reduce our impact on climate?

In their research about influencing consumer choices to reduce climate impact McFadden, et al. (2022) make a very important point. We have to consider more than just the potential impact we have on climate change when it comes to decisions about food, shelter and transportation. We have to look at the big picture, the costs, benefits and 'plasticity' - how impactable are people when it comes to changing behavior? What has the greatest realistic expected impact on climate? 

When thinking about the problem this way, one question that comes to mind is - how many other seemingly arbitrary choices (other than reducing beef consumption) could we make in our daily lives that would have a similar climate benefit?  

Let Me Count the Ways (other arbitrary ways to reduce your carbon footprint)

Another article by Obringer, et al. (2021) provides some interesting insights about the carbon footprint associated with various ways we use the internet:

• Globally, the Internet use has a carbon footprint ranging from 28 to 63 g CO2 equivalent per gigabyte (GB)
• The world median is 32.3 g CO2 per GB
• The U.S. median is 9% higher
• Common streaming services require 7 GB per hour of streaming using ultra HD quality video and have a carbon footprint of 441 g CO2e/hr
• Streaming 4 hrs/day with HD quality video produces about 53 kg CO2e/month
• Streaming at a lower quality SD video would reduce CO2e/month to about 2.5 kg
• Standard video conference services use ~ 2.5 GB/hr associated with 157 g CO2e/hr
• 15 one hour meetings a week equate to a monthly carbon footprint of 9.4 kg
• By turning off the video camera at an individual level, monthly CO2e emissions could be reduced from 9.4 kg to 377 g CO2e. This is equivalent to enough emissions savings to offset charging a smart phone each night for over 3 years (1151 days). 

Separate research reported in MIT Technology review indicates that training common AI models that underpin a number of the technologies and apps we leverage every day and will continue to use in the future can produce as much as 5 times the lifetime CO2 emissions of a single car (Strubell et al., 2019 & Haoarchive, 2019) 

Framing Up the Discussion

Obringer, et al. (2021) certainly motivates us to think of a number of arbitrary ways we can reduce our carbon footprint other than making dietary changes when we think of all the various ways we use internet services in the age of Zoom meetings, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and smart phones. But let's take another look at beef consumption. 

• In the U.S. the average consumer consumes about 60 pounds of beef/year
• On a monthly basis that equates to 5 lbs or about 2.26 kg/beef/person
• According to Rotz (2019) 1 kg of U.S. beef produces 22 kg of CO2 equivalent emissions

So if an individual consumer gives up U.S. beef for a month that equates to a reduction of about 50 kg CO2e emissions. It looks like the emissions related to beef consumption may be very similar to streaming HD video on a monthly basis given the assumptions above. 

On the other hand, it looks like giving up beef for a month would have a much bigger impact on climate than giving up your Zoom camera for a month! More than 2x the impact. 

But that is not even the full picture. We also have to consider how livestock emissions differ from emissions related to many other arbitrary things we do on a daily basis. Sure CO2 is CO2 but there's more to the story and that requires consideration of the biogenic carbon cycle pictured below:

That little cloud in the sketch represents the carbon footprint of beef - and if we are considering U.S. beef it represents less than 1/2 of 1%  (i.e. < .5%) of global greenhouse gas emissions. If all U.S. consumers give up U.S. beef, then that little cloud completely goes away. On the other hand, if you decide to consume the same average amount of beef you have consumed for decades, that decision is not adding any new net GHG emissions to the atmosphere. We just keep recycling that same little cloud over and over. And as production technologies and management practices improve, we can eat the same amount of beef or more and make the cloud even smaller. But it doesn't get any bigger and on the net beef consumption doesn't have any new net impact on the climate. We also have to consider tradeoffs related to nutrient density to really grasp all the implications related to food choices and climate see here and here.

But, as pictured below, the story changes when we shift our attention to many other arbitrary choices we make on any given day: 

Almost every thing else we do that creates CO2 emissions bypasses the biogenic carbon cycle and adds new and long lasting greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere. If we give up U.S. beef, that little cloud goes away (and as stated before has a minimal impact on a global scale). But for example, every time you turn on your web cam or stream HD, you are contributing to adding new and permanent long lasting GHG emissions to the atmosphere. So maybe according to the facts above, the little cloud you are recycling from monthly beef consumption is 2X larger than the cloud you are producing from your Zoom meeting. However, every time you zoom you are making another little cloud. And those little clouds can add up to be much bigger and never go away even if you eventually stop 'zooming.' On the other hand - every month you are streaming video you are producing a new cloud just as big as the one that's just being recycled if you consume beef, and its having a permanent and lasting impact on climate. 

There are many other little things we do just as arbitrary as the decision to consume U.S. beef that also have important if not more consequential implications for climate change.

What should we do? What is the most important thing you can do to have an impact on climate? If we are really concerned about this we have to ask ourselves when it comes to combating climate change, which behaviors and barriers should we be targeting to have the greatest impact? 

As a personal choice some might say why not give up beef and also do other things to fight climate change - we should be doing everything we can. Many might agree that is a good idea - but being good isn't enough for an idea to scale effectively and always have the impact we desire. Trying to scale one idea based on beef consumption can risk drawing attention and resources away from more effective strategies. It could lead to odd and distracted behaviors like having a salad delivered by Uber Eats instead of a steak and thinking every order like this is doing your little part to save the planet as pictured below:

A broader perspective asks, how should we prioritize our time, attention and resources TODAY to have the greatest impact tomorrow? Do we start with that little cloud from beef while we continue to livestream HD quality from Netflix and have our salad delivered by Uber eats?

Turning off the video essentially has an easy button and cuts off the unending flow of climate emissions. But changing culture and food systems requires a lot more effort with a much lower expected payoff. We'd be shooting for 1/2 of 1% of global GHG emissions max and that's not even a realistic goal. 

Related Readings:

Behavioral Economics, Beef, and Climate: https://ageconomist.blogspot.com/2023/02/behavioral-economics-beef-and-climate.html 

Training a single AI model can emit as much carbon as five cars in their lifetimes: Deep learning has a terrible carbon footprint. By Karen Haoarchive.  June 6, 2019 https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/06/06/239031/training-a-single-ai-model-can-emit-as-much-carbon-as-five-cars-in-their-lifetimes/ 

References:

Estimated micronutrient shortfalls of the EAT–Lancet planetary health diet.Beal, Ty et al.The Lancet Planetary Health, Volume 7, Issue 3, e233 - e237

McFadden BR, Ferraro PJ, Messer KD (2022) Private costs of carbon emissions abatement by limiting beef consumption and vehicle use in the United States. PLOS ONE 17(1): e0261372. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261372

Obringer, R., Rachunok, B., Maia-Silva, D., Arbabzadeh, M., Nateghi, R., & Madani, K. (2021). The overlooked environmental footprint of increasing Internet use. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 167, [105389]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2020.105389

C. Alan Rotz, Senorpe Asem-Hiablie, Sara Place, Greg Thoma, Environmental footprints of beef cattle production in the United States, Agricultural Systems, Volume 169, 2019, Pages 1-13, ISSN 0308-521X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2018.11.005.

Smedman A, Lindmark-Månsson H, Drewnowski A, Edman AK. Nutrient density of beverages in relation to climate impact. Food Nutr Res. 2010 Aug 23;54. doi: 10.3402/fnr.v54i0.5170. PMID: 20806074; PMCID: PMC2924839.

Strubell, Emma & Ganesh, Ananya & Mccallum, Andrew. (2019). Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLP. 3645-3650. 10.18653/v1/P19-1355.

Nudging Back: Turning Off Your Camera May Be Good for the Climate

How many of us have been nudged during a zoom meeting to turn on your camera? In recent research (Obringer, et al. 2021) published in the journal Resources, Conservation and Recycling, they have attempted to quantify the carbon footprint of using your camera during a virtual meeting. Can this new research be used to nudge back and keep your camera off in the name of improving your company's ESG reporting? Should we be putting more energy in nudging this direction vs. focusing on more difficult dietary behavior changes? 

Background

In a recent post I wrote about the ethics of dietary nudges focused on meat consumption. Particularly I discussed Blondin et al. (2022). In that article they investigated the use of descriptive messages as a means to nudge consumers to choose plant based foods over meat. Below is one of the messages using small change-big impact framing (which they found to be the most impactful in their research) to nudge consumers to choose a vegetarian dish over meat:

"Each of us can make a positive difference for the planet. Swapping just one meat dish for a plant-based one saves greenhouse gas emissions that are equivalent to the energy used to charge your phone for two years. Your small change can make a big difference."

Over the years I have thought a lot about the focus on meat, and particularly beef consumption, as a way to reduce our carbon foot print. The nudge above gives the impression that you could make a big difference in relation to the climate by choosing a salad over steak. Similarly I've been intrigued by other popular movements with similar goals like Meatless Mondays. 

There is a clear ceiling on the impact we can have when it comes to beef consumption. Even if we eliminated from our diets all beef produced and consumed in the U.S. it would reduce global GHG emissions by less than 1/2 of 1%. (EPA GHG Emissions Inventory, Rotz et al, 2018). 

Are these movements and the language used above giving people the impression they are making a bigger difference with regard to climate change than they really are? Could they be distractions from more impactful behaviors? 

Nudging for Impact

McFadden, et al. (2022) discusses important considerations related to the potential impact of nudges given consumer plasticity (willingness and ability to change) and realistic assessments of climate impact. (Realistic assessments of impact and ethics were the primary focus of my previous post.) 

McFadden, et al. discuss how challenging and costly dietary changes can be given strong consumer preferences. They find:

"our estimates imply that it would cost at least $642 per tCO2e to reduce GHG emissions by inducing 50% of our study sample to eliminate beef consumption...currently the price to offset a tCO2e (based on existing markets for carbon offsets) is between $10 to $13." 

When thinking about the problem this way, one question that comes to mind is - how many other seemingly arbitrary choices (other than reducing beef consumption) could we make in our daily lives that would have a similar climate benefit?  

Let Me Count the Ways (other arbitrary ways to reduce your carbon footprint)

The article mentioned above by Obringer, et al. (2021) provides some interesting insights about the carbon footprint associated with various ways we use the internet:

• Globally, the Internet use has a carbon footprint ranging from 28 to 63 g CO2 equivalent per gigabyte (GB)
• The world median is 32.3 g CO2 per GB
• The U.S. median is 9% higher
• Common streaming services require 7 GB per hour of streaming using ultra HD quality video and have a carbon footprint of 441 g CO2e/hr
• Streaming 4 hrs/day with HD quality video produces about 53 kg CO2e/month
• Streaming at a lower quality SD video would reduce CO2e/month to about 2.5 kg
• Standard video conference services use ~ 2.5 GB/hr associated with 157 g CO2e/hr
• 15 one hour meetings a week equate to a monthly carbon footprint of 9.4 kg
• By turning off the video camera at an individual level, monthly CO2e emissions could be reduced from 9.4 kg to 377 g CO2e. This is equivalent to enough emissions savings to offset charging a smart phone each night for over 3 years (1151 days). 

Separate research reported in MIT Technology review indicates that training common AI models that underpin a number of the technologies and apps we leverage every day and will continue to use in the future can produce as much as 5 times the lifetime CO2 emissions of a single car (Strubell et al., 2019 & Haoarchive, 2019) 

Framing Up the Discussion

Obringer, et al. (2021) certainly motivates us to think of a number of arbitrary ways we can reduce our carbon footprint other than making dietary changes when we think of all the various ways we use internet services in the age of Zoom meetings, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and smart phones. But let's take another look at beef consumption. 

• In the U.S. the average consumer consumes about 60 pounds of beef/year
• On a monthly basis that equates to 5 lbs or about 2.26 kg/beef/person
• According to Rotz (2019) 1 kg of U.S. beef produces 22 kg of CO2 equivalent emissions
• So if an individual consumer gives up U.S. beef for a month that equates to a reduction of about 50 kg CO2e emissions 

It looks like the emissions related to beef consumption may be very similar to streaming HD video on a monthly basis given the assumption above. 

Just based on the facts above- it looks like giving up beef for a month would have a much bigger impact on climate than giving up your Zoom camera for a month! More than 2x the impact. 

On the other hand -  giving up our Netflix binge could have the same climate impact as completely giving up beef! 

It's not quite so simple. 

While it seems like we are making apples to apples CO2e comparisons we have to consider other differences in the way GHG emissions behave especially as this relates to methane and how it is factored into CO2e calculations. See below:

Methane emissions associated with routine meat consumption do not represent a new net lasting contribution to GHG emissions, but instead are a recycling of already existing methane emissions. However, turning on your zoom camera or streaming HD video is a new behavior that leads to the release of new sources of methane and CO2 with long term permanent warming effects on the climate. The decision to continue with routine beef consumption has different implications for the climate than the decision to pump new methane emissions into the atmosphere by turning on your camera or binging with HD video quality. 

We also have to ask ourselves - which behavior is the most impactable? Going back to McFadden, et al. (2022) when it comes to combating climate change, which behaviors and barriers should we be targeting to have the greatest impact? People are already very inclined to turn off their cameras during a meeting - and there is literally and easy button to do that! Reducing how much we stream video is relatively easy change to make. But changing diets is extremely difficult. There is no easy button.  When we consider the tradeoffs involved (more discussion below) and fully incorporate the ramifications of the biogenic carbon cycle, in addition to consumer plasticity, reducing beef consumption may not be the top priority. 

We could think of it this way. On a given day, if you decide to consume the same average amount of beef you have consumed for decades, that decision is not adding any new net GHG emissions to the atmosphere. But every time you turn on your web cam or stream HD, you are contributing to adding new and permanent long lasting GHG emissions to the atmosphere. 

It is certainly true that if you chose NOT to have the beef there is a climate benefit - and the numbers shared above approximately reflect that. If everyone in the U.S. made the same decision 365 days/year there is a minimal upper limit on that impact, but there would certainly be a reduction in GHG emissions. If we stop eating beef, the emissions from the last decade go away with it due to the biogenic carbon cycle. Even if it takes decades to change the behavior this is true (based on beef consumption trends and technological advances and remember with constant levels of beef consumption over time new emissions aren't added and don't accumulate b/c they are simply being recycled)

But if we wait a decade to start turning off our web cams or downgrading to SD all those past emissions stay where they are and continue to warm the planet. From a behavior change perspective the urgency to turn of the camera and downgrade our streaming seems much greater. 

Some might agree that it makes sense to do both, but it would seem remiss to focus on beef consumption only while ignoring all the many other arbitrary behaviors we could target that may be more urgent and more impactable from a behavior change perspective.

A Path Toward Better Framing and Nudging

In a previous post, I already covered some of the implications of how we frame food choices and the impact on climate. But perhaps the framing of beef vs. salad is completely wrong to begin with. When framing food choices, are we making a mistake when we discuss what is healthy vs. unhealthy in the context of food groups (meat vs. vegetables) or macro nutrients (fat vs. protein vs. carbs)? When we add climate, ethics, and politics to the recipe do we risk taking this to orthorexic extremes that end up causing as much harm as good?

These kind of broad categorizations can limit our thinking and fail to capture the nuance in the tradeoffs involved. When it comes to balancing these tradeoffs a framing that considers specific context (knowledge of the circumstances of time and place), individual consumer preferences (plasticity), nutrient density (see here and here), climate impact (accurately reflecting the behavior of carbon and methane), and technological change is essential.

Related Posts

The Ethics of Dietary Nudges and Behavior Change Focused on Climate and Sustainability. https://ageconomist.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-ethics-of-dietary-nudges-and.html

Innovation, Disruption, and Low(er) Carbon Beef https://ageconomist.blogspot.com/2022/01/innovation-disruption-and-lower-carbon.html 

Facts, Figures, or Fiction: Unwarranted Criticisms of the Biden Administration's Failure to Target Methane Emissions from Livestock. https://ageconomist.blogspot.com/2021/12/facts-figures-or-fiction-unfair.html 

Can Capitalism Be A Force For Good When it Comes to Food? https://ageconomist.blogspot.com/2021/07/can-capitalism-be-force-for-good-when.html

References: 

Blondin, Stacy & Attwood, Sophie & Vennard, Daniel & Mayneris, Vanessa. (2022). Environmental Messages Promote Plant-Based Food Choices: An Online Restaurant Menu Study. World Resources Institute. 10.46830/wriwp.20.00137. 

McFadden BR, Ferraro PJ, Messer KD (2022) Private costs of carbon emissions abatement by limiting beef consumption and vehicle use in the United States. PLOS ONE 17(1): e0261372. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261372

Training a single AI model can emit as much carbon as five cars in their lifetimes: Deep learning has a terrible carbon footprint. By Karen Haoarchive.  June 6, 2019 https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/06/06/239031/training-a-single-ai-model-can-emit-as-much-carbon-as-five-cars-in-their-lifetimes/ 

Obringer, R., Rachunok, B., Maia-Silva, D., Arbabzadeh, M., Nateghi, R., & Madani, K. (2021). The overlooked environmental footprint of increasing Internet use. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 167, [105389]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2020.105389

C. Alan Rotz, Senorpe Asem-Hiablie, Sara Place, Greg Thoma, Environmental footprints of beef cattle production in the United States, Agricultural Systems, Volume 169, 2019, Pages 1-13, ISSN 0308-521X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2018.11.005.

Strubell, Emma & Ganesh, Ananya & Mccallum, Andrew. (2019). Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLP. 3645-3650. 10.18653/v1/P19-1355.

Notes: 

The methodology used by Obringer may be subject to criticism and may not consider long term emission reductions due to efficiencies produced by technological change over time (not unlike beef production). I'm using their results as motivation for a discussion about considering the tradeoffs and nuances often left out of discussions associated with food choices. We can also recognize that zoom and other technologies may have had a significant role to play in reducing travel and related transportation and other emissions related to in person meetings. However, at the margin, these technologies still lead to ongoing permanent emissions and warming effects compared to beef consumption.

Innovation, Disruption, and Low(er) Carbon Beef

Is There Really Such a Thing as Low-Carbon Beef? That is the title of a recent article in Wired. The article was referring to a new USDA program that will allow beef to be labeled and marketed as having a lower carbon footprint based on a lifecycle assessment and audit of production practices. To be lower carbon it must be 10% lower. Here is a bit more detail:

"Verification of reduced greenhouse gas emissions in a group of cattle using a comprehensive life-cycle assessment model that incorporates impacts associated with management practices and cattle performance throughout the life of the animals.A qualified group of cattle must have life-cycle greenhouse emissions at least 10% lower than industry baseline based on the Low Carbon Beef Scoring Tables." 

Before getting into this further I will first answer the question posed by the title. Yes - on a relative global basis, beef produced and consumed in the U.S. is low carbon. Beef in the U.S. accounts for about 4% of total GHG emissions. But on a global scale, which matters most to climate change, overall, total GHG emissions related to U.S. beef consumption accounts for less than 1/2 of 1% (i.e. .5%) of GHG emissions (EPA GHG Emissions Inventory, Rotz et al, 2018). Additionally when compared to beef produced and consumed in other parts of the world, the carbon footprint of beef produced and consumed in the U.S. is 10 times or more lower (Herrero et al., 2013). There is no arguing against the fact  that when we look at the big picture, U.S. beef is low carbon beef. Of course it is fair to ask, within the U.S. can we improve our carbon footprint? Our history tells us yes we can and as I will discuss below, the new USDA labeling program cited in Wired may be one way to incentivize getting there. 

Will this new labeling and certification initiative be misleading as the article says? I am one of the first people to speak out against misleading food labels. Just see related posts below. There is currently a lot of confusion about the sustainability of our food choices,  and consumers are having to use a lot of proxies that are less than ideal to attempt to understand their carbon footprint. Examples include local, organic, 'hormone free', or non-GMO products (see my post about issue related to free-from food labeling). All of these options can in fact have higher carbon footprints, lead to more intense resource use, and have negative social and environmental consequences despite how popular some fads may be or what food marketers may imply about their product. By having a verified measure of carbon footprint associated with beef, the new USDA initiative should actually provide clarity to a confused and often misled consumer. Precisely the opposite of the concern raised in Wired.

Misleading or Realistic Recommendations?

The article in Wired quotes the following recommendation: "low-carbon certifications won’t fix the problems caused by beef consumption. “We need to substantially readjust our diets'

Another common suggestion to go along with this is to consume more plant based or cultured alternative meat sources. These suggestions suffer from two major drawbacks. From a behavioral science perspective, they are challenging behaviors to target. 

In a previous post, I discussed how we need to think about the problem we are trying to solve or outcome we are trying to achieve (climate change mitigation) and consider the behavioral map that relates all of the target actions we could take to achieve this outcome. Which solutions are technically correct but also the most impactful at scale from a behavior change perspective? Is a reduction in modern U.S. beef production or consumption the target behavior we should be trying to change compared to other options?

Paul Ferraro, Brandon McFadden, and Kent Messer take this head on using an auction experiment to measure 'plasticity' or the willingness of non-adopters to change behavior (Ferraro, et al., 2022).They find that targeting beef consumption might not be the most socially cost effective approach to mitigating climate change compared to other strategies for abatement (like carbon offsets or policies that encourage more technical innovations). They state:

 "Policy interventions are likely to provide the best return on investment when they target choices and behaviors for which abatement potential and plasticity are high enough to lead to meaningful reductions in GHG emissions....our estimates imply that it would cost at least $642 per tCO2e to reduce GHG emissions by inducing 50% of our study sample to eliminate beef consumption...currently the price to offset a tCO2e (based on existing markets for carbon offsets) is between $10 to $13." 

These costs are not only higher than market based estimates of the cost of carbon but also most estimates of the social cost of carbon as well even at the lower plasticity levels. They state: "in the U.S., a median estimate of the SCC is $48 per tCO2e."

The Fallacy of Disruption

The recommendations from Wired (and similar recommendations promoting cultured or alternative meats) may also suffer from what I am calling the fallacy of disruption. In his book Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments, Steffan Thomke discusses what drives many important innovations as high velocity incrementalism. Not huge disruptive leaps:

"Even though the business world glorifies disruptive ideas, most progress is achieved by implementing hundreds of thousands of minor improvements that can have a big cumulative effect."

When looking at total economic growth, economists have estimated that 77% of economic growth is driven by existing products not via creative destruction associated with new products (Garcia‐Macia et al., 2019). While creative destruction is a well recognized and essential process in our economy, it is important to recognize there is a lot of progress to be made through high velocity incrementalism.  

The suggestion from the article that alludes to making huge technological disruptive leaps (like cell cultured meat alternatives) or behavior changes (making significant dietary changes) just isn't consistent with what we know about behavioral economics and the economics of innovation. As the work from Ferraro et al. has recently shown, even small changes in beef reduction aren't as practical as we might think. 

Internalizing Climate Externalities via Technological Change and Innovation

Climate change problems are what economists refer to as externalities, which at a high level are unpriced negative consequences of our behavior that fall on third parties or future generations. One way externalities are internalized are through technological innovations, which as discussed above, can result from incremental changes to the way we produce and consume goods and services. We have witnessed this in the beef industry over the last few decades. Thanks to advances in economic development, technological change, innovations in management, marketing, and pricing value in the beef industry (for just a few examples see here, here, here, here, and here), we've seen gains in beef production and quality. Additionally, in 2007 compared to 1977 we were able to produce the same amount of beef using roughly 30% fewer cattle and 30% less land. This represents a huge impact on global warming potential when we consider the implications of this in the context of methane emissions and the biogenic carbon cycle. As previously discussed, :

"when you get in your car to go to your favorite restaurant, the associated methane and CO2 emissions that result represents new and long lasting emissions. For the most part the steak or burger on your plate doesn't directly add any new warming potential to the atmosphere that didn't already exist, nor has any steak or burger you may have eaten in the last 30 years based on this data."

Feed and and water usage were also down between 15-20% with a 16% lower carbon footprint (Capper, 2007). All of these factors have culminated in a healthier, more nutritious, higher quality product with a lower carbon footprint. As noted above, compared to other places in the world, the impact of technological innovation is many fold.

It is important to note that these innovations were market driven. They entailed voluntary behavior changes by both producers and consumers that led to higher quality, more nutritious, and more environmentally friendly beef. In addition to helping provide more clarity to consumers compared to existing labeling schemes, the new USDA labels will only help incentivize this innovative process by effectively putting a price on carbon, in absence of any new regulatory frameworks, subsidies, permits, or carbon taxes. 

The history of food innovation in the beef industry tells us this trend of voluntary and market driven advancement will continue. While in the life sciences, the 'high velocity' part of high velocity incrementalism is more challenging than designing a search engine or smartphone app, with the convergence of big data, AI, and genomics,  innovations are happening faster. Current trends in ESG reporting and concerns about scope 3 emissions, along with advances in block chain and other source verification technologies will only further catalyze future advances. We just don't have this kind of momentum behind drastic dietary fads related to huge reductions in beef consumption, going vegan, or alternative proteins. 

Related Reading

Rational Irrationality and Satter's Hierarchy of Food Needs http://ageconomist.blogspot.com/2018/10/rational-irrationality-and-satters.html  

The 'free-from' Nash equilibrium 

http://ageconomist.blogspot.com/2018/02/a-nash-equilibrium-strategy-for-free.html 

The Challenging Tradeoff of Weighing Biased Consumer Preferences Against Marketing Food with Integrity. http://ageconomist.blogspot.com/2017/12/allenge-tradeoff-of-weighing-biased.html  

GMOs and QR Codes: Consumers need more than a label they need a learning path. 

https://ageconomist.blogspot.com/2016/08/gmos-is-just-any-label-enough.html 

Food Miles: https://ageconomist.blogspot.com/2011/12/usda-research-food-miles-local-beef.html 

Food Desert Mirage https://ageconomist.blogspot.com/2020/01/dollar-stores-and-food-desertification.html 

References

HJ. L. Capper, The environmental impact of beef production in the United States: 1977 compared with 2007, Journal of Animal Science, Volume 89, Issue 12, December 2011, Pages 4249–4261, https://doi.org/10.2527/jas.2010-3784

Private costs of carbon emissions abatement by limiting beef consumption and vehicle use in the United States. McFadden BR, Ferraro PJ, Messer KD (2022) Private costs of carbon emissions abatement by limiting beef consumption and vehicle use in the United States. PLOS ONE 17(1): e0261372. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261372

Daniel Garcia‐Macia & Chang‐Tai Hsieh & Peter J. Klenow, 2019. "How Destructive Is Innovation?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 87(5), pages 1507-1541, September.

Herrero, M., P. Havlík, H. Valin, A. Notenbaert, M.C. Rufino, P. K. Thornton, M. Blümmel, F. Weiss, D. Grace, and M. Obersteiner. 2013. Biomass use, production, feed efficiencies, and greenhouse gas emissions from global livestock systems. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 110: 20888-20893

Facts, Figures, or Fiction: Unwarranted Criticisms of the Biden Administration's Failure to Target Methane Emissions from Livestock

Background

Methane has gotten a lot of attention recently in relation to fighting climate change:

"The oil, gas and coal industries are the largest source of human-caused methane emissions. An Environmental Defense Fund study found that cutting methane emissions now could slow the near-term rate of global warming by as much as 30%."

While these facts may be true, it takes theory to explain facts, and unfortunately bad theory leads to bad decisions even if we get the facts right. A recent article in Politico provides an example in it's criticism of the Biden administration's failure to target methane emissions from livestock to combat climate change:

"This creative accounting and the administration’s policies belittle the livestock industry’s role in the methane emergency. While Biden and other U.S. officials are preaching the importance of slashing methane emissions to prevent catastrophic warming and imposing tough new methane regulations on fossil fuel companies, they are allowing super-polluting meat and dairy corporations to continue to emit massive amounts of the same greenhouse gas with impunity."

Are all methane sources equal?

Accounting for methane is key, but there is a lot of nuance to understand about methane in order to account for it appropriately so that we take the right course of action when it comes to policy and food choices.

Let's start with a bigger picture looking at total GHG emissions by source:

Source: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-sinks 

When we drill into agriculture and focus on beef in the U.S. we find that it accounts for about 4% of total emissions. But on a global scale, which matters most to climate change, overall, total GHG emissions related to U.S. beef consumption accounts for less than 1/2 of 1% (i.e. .5%) of global GHG emissions (EPA GHG Emissions Inventory, Rotz et al, 2018). When we talk about methane emissions associated with eating U.S. sourced beef in the U.S., we are talking about a very thin slice of total global warming potential. 

When we zoom in on this slice of potential and focus on methane this is what we see according to the current administration's Methane Emissions Reduction Action Plan:

Source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/US-Methane-Emissions-Reduction-Action-Plan-1.pdf  

Enteric emissions account for all ruminant livestock emissions in the U.S. which would include both beef and dairy but that gives us a pretty good picture. Again, we have facts that are all true, but *how* should we interpret this? A naive interpretation would be to simply compare the pieces of the pie assuming that we can make apples to apples comparisons between each piece and choose a course of action based on the 'facts.'  But this would be misleading without understanding the underlying biology and data generating mechanisms giving rise to this data.

The crude infographic that I put together below sheds some light on this (See this video for a better illustration or Dr. Frank Mitloehner's more detailed explanation of the biogenic carbon cycle here; see also Allen, M.R., Shine, K.P., Fuglestvedt, J.S. et al., 2018). At the highest level, methane emissions produced by beef cattle are constantly recycled. The ultimate source of methane starts in plants and is consumed by livestock and later removed from the atmosphere in the form of CO2 by plants again to repeat. This can be visualized by a tank with water going in and eventually draining out. In this context methane is a 'flow' gas.

Methane sourced from natural gas and petroleum behaves differently. When we extract, refine, and burn fossil fuels the methane associated with this is released into the atmosphere, but absent any sort of mitigation it ultimately converts to CO2 where it remains to have a long lasting warming effect. This can be visualized by a tank with water going in but never draining out. 

In relation to the first tank representing enteric emissions from livestock, there are additional nuances. When we look at U.S. cattle inventories over the last 30 years what we see is that the rate of flow from the faucet has mostly been decreasing. We have not only been recycling the same methane in the atmosphere over and over the last few decades, but less of it. Thanks to advances in economic development, technological change, innovations in management, marketing, and pricing value in the beef industry (for just a few examples see here, here, here, here, and here), we've seen gains in beef production and quality. Additionally, in 2007 compared to 1977 we were able to produce the same amount of beef using roughly 30% fewer cattle and 30% less land. Feed and and water usage were down between 15-20% with a 16% lower carbon footprint (Capper, 2007). All of these factors have culminated in a healthier, more nutritious, higher quality product with a lower carbon footprint. We can't say the same about methane associated with fossil fuels and transportation which continues to flow at greater rates and doesn't get recycled. 

Source: https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2021/01-29-2021.php 

So when you get in your car to go to your favorite restaurant, the associated methane and CO2 emissions that result represents new and long lasting emissions. For the most part the steak or burger on your plate doesn't directly add any new warming potential to the atmosphere that didn't already exist, nor has any steak or burger you may have eaten in the last 30 years based on this data! 

Are all sources of beef equal?

Why focus on U.S. beef production and consumption in this discussion? Because in the Politico article and in many conversations like this, the context is often subtly switched between consumers of U.S. beef and consumption of beef sourced in other parts of the world as if they are substitutes. This change in context ignores important differences between technological capabilities and production practices but also differences in incomes, tastes, and preferences. A lot of the criticism of U.S. beef may actually be true in relation to beef produced and consumed in other parts of the world. We are not burning down rain forests in the U.S. in order to produce and consume beef, and the indirect connection between U.S. beef production and consumption and deforestation in other parts of the world is very weak due to the way global beef markets function. However, there are opportunities to make beef greener in other parts of the world that should not be ignored and should be researched further (see Mrode et al., 2019; Silva et al., 2018; Gates, 2017).

Should we just ignore the very potent warming potential represented by methane emissions associated with U.S. beef consumption just because it represents a thin slice of the global pie that is relevant to climate change? No, but we should put it in the proper perspective, and think of the overall global portfolio of choices we make in our diets and daily lives and not get anchored on facts divorced from the proper context so we can actually make impactful decisions. 

Consumer fads and a climate friendly behavior change strategy

As discussed above, even if all U.S. consumers gave up beef tomorrow cold turkey, there is an upper limit on the impact we can have globally. Modest changes either reducing beef consumption or switching to alternative proteins would be even less impactful. However, we should still recognize that lots of small changes could add up to have a meaningful effect in the aggregate. Given the behavioral and nutritional challenges that make any meaningful reduction in beef consumption mostly impractical at a population level (and ignoring the elephant in the room that is transportation) it is an empirical question as to what other seemingly arbitrary lifestyle changes we could suggest to decrease our impact on climate - maybe that once a week trip to the grocer to buy in bulk instead of having the fleet of Amazon, UPS, and FedEx trucks down your street multiple times a week is one example. Other consumerist trends we've seen that could also be adding to our carbon footprint could involve the fads and infatuation with local, natural, and organic food consumption, and the notorious 'free-from' food marketing campaigns that tend to demonize climate saving technologies (see here, here, here, here, here, and here for related info). 

Putting the lens of behavioral science on this, we need to think about the problem we are trying to solve or outcome we are trying to achieve (climate change mitigation) and consider the behavioral map that relates all of the target actions we could take to achieve this outcome. What role does science literacy and misinformation and disinformation play in the trends and food fads noted above that could lead to hesitancy to adopt climate saving technologies? Which solutions are technically correct but also the most impactful at scale from a behavior change perspective? Is a reduction in modern U.S. beef production or consumption the target behavior we should be trying to change compared to other options? Maybe for some people but I'm not convinced it is a global solution. 

Getting the most nutritional bang for our climate buck

How do we know we are getting the most nutritional bang for our climate buck when thinking through this? In a 2010 Food and Nutrition Research article, authors introduce the Nutrient Density to Climate Impact (NDCI) index. Metrics like this could add some perspective. According to their work:

"the NDCI index was 0 for carbonated water, soft drink, and beer and below 0.1 for red wine and oat drink. The NDCI index was similar for orange juice (0.28) and soy drink  (0.25). Due to a very high-nutrient density, the NDCI index for milk was substantially higher (0.54) than for the other beverages. Future discussion on how changes in food consumption patterns might help avert climate change need to take both GHG emission and nutrient density of foods and beverages into account."

Authors Drewnowski, Adam et al. apply this more nuanced approach to 34 different food categories including meat and dairy:

"Efforts to decrease global GHGEs while maintaining nutritionally adequate, affordable, and acceptable diets need to be guided by considerations of the ND and environmental impact of different foods and food groups. In a series of recent studies, the principal sustainability measure was carbon cost expressed in terms of GHGEs (8, 14, 15). Testing the relation between nutrient profile of foods and their carbon footprint can help identify those food groups that provide both calories and optimal nutrition at a low carbon cost."

Just as combining trips and carpooling might be effective ways to reduce your carbon footprint getting the most out of every mile driven and gallon of gas used, to be truly impactful regarding climate change, we should be trying to get the most out of every bite we take and ounce we drink. 

Weighing efficiency and values

The previous discussion starts to sound a lot like a position related to optimization and efficiency which ultimately requires making value judgements that science and economics can't make.

As discussed in Heyne, Boettke, and Prychitco's text The Economic Way of Thinking:

"efficiency is essentially an evaluative term. It always has to do with the ratio fo the value of output to the value of input...in effect it depends on what people want done and how they value what they want done. It follows that the efficiency of any process can change with changes in valuations."

What I am getting at is that maybe people prefer to have sustenance from beef vs rice or other alternatives and we have to give weight to that in a policy framework. Physical and technical facts alone can never fully determine efficiency. That's what makes economics so powerful. Its the study of people's choices and how they are made compatible. It is way more than just the study of the technical allocation of resources because it forces us to consider each individual's preferences based on the knowledge of their specific circumstances of time and place.

Science and economics can't make value judgements for us, but we should strive get the facts right, and the stories we tell with the facts need to be true to the science behind them. 

Additional and Related References:

HJ. L. Capper, The environmental impact of beef production in the United States: 1977 compared with 2007, Journal of Animal Science, Volume 89, Issue 12, December 2011, Pages 4249–4261, https://doi.org/10.2527/jas.2010-3784

Rafael De Oliveira Silva, Luis Gustavo Barioni, Giampaolo Queiroz Pellegrino, Dominic Moran, The role of agricultural intensification in Brazil's Nationally Determined Contribution on emissions mitigation, Agricultural Systems, Volume 161, 2018, Pages 102-112, ISSN 0308-521X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2018.01.003.

Mrode, R., Ojango, J., Okeyo, A. M., & Mwacharo, J. M. (2019). Genomic Selection and Use of Molecular Tools in Breeding Programs for Indigenous and Crossbred Cattle in Developing Countries: Current Status and Future Prospects. Frontiers in genetics, 9, 694. https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2018.00694

C. Alan Rotz et al. Environmental footprints of beef cattle production in the United States, Agricultural Systems (2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.agsy.2018.11.005 

https://phys.org/news/2019-03-beef-resource-greenhouse-gas-emissions.html

What cowboys can teach us about feeding the world. Could a cattle ranch in Australia improve food security in Africa? Bill Gates. Gates Notes. July 18, 2017. https://www.gatesnotes.com/Development/What-Cowboys-Can-Teach-Us-About-Feeding-the-World?WT.mc_id=07_18_2017_10_AustralianCattle_BG-LI_&WT.tsrc=BGLI

Scarborough, P., & Rayner, M. (2010). Nutrient Density to Climate Impact index is an inappropriate system for ranking beverages in order of climate impact per nutritional value. Food & nutrition research, 54, 10.3402/fnr.v54i0.5681. https://doi.org/10.3402/fnr.v54i0.5681

Drewnowski, Adam et al. “Energy and nutrient density of foods in relation to their carbon footprint.” The American journal of clinical nutrition 101 1 (2015): 184-91 .

Allen, M.R., Shine, K.P., Fuglestvedt, J.S. et al. A solution to the misrepresentations of CO2-equivalent emissions of short-lived climate pollutants under ambitious mitigation. npj Clim Atmos Sci 1, 16 (2018) doi:10.1038/s41612-018-0026-8

GWP* Better Captures the Impact of Methane's Warming Potential

Understanding the differences in the way CO2 vs methane behaves is fundamental to understanding their respective roles impacting climate change, and personal and policy decisions related to mitigating future warming. A practical example, properly accounting for these differences, the global impact of U.S. beef consumption (or other ruminant food sources) over time in terms of carbon footprint (related to enteric emissions) could be even less than previously understood. Understanding this can help direct attention to those areas where we can make the biggest difference in terms impacting climate change.

 From:

 Allen, M.R., Shine, K.P., Fuglestvedt, J.S. et al. A solution to the misrepresentations of CO2-equivalent emissions of short-lived climate pollutants under ambitious mitigation. npj Clim Atmos Sci 1, 16 (2018) doi:10.1038/s41612-018-0026-8


"While shorter-term goals for emission rates of individual gases and broader metrics encompassing emissions’ co-impacts2,6,31 remain potentially useful in defining how cumulative contributions will be achieved, summarising commitments using a metric that accurately reflects their contributions to future warming would provide greater transparency in the implications of global climate agreements as well as enabling fairer and more effective design of domestic policies and measures."

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0026-8#Sec1

See also:

A Green New Deal for Agriculture?

Religiousity, Beef, and the Environment

EconTalk: Matt Ridley, Martin Weitzman, Climate Change and Fat Tails

Hybrid Corn vs. Hybrid Cars

Welfare Analysis: Just Do It!

Some Beef Related Posts From the Incidental Economist

I'm a big fan of the Incidental Economist blog where I have learned a lot about healthcare economics. Recently healthcare economist Austin Frakt has shared some video monologues discussing meat, fake meat, health and the environment.

In the first video he discusses some recent research related to meat consumption and health, mainly there is no evidence that red meat presents a major health concern. And the challenge of observational data and research related to this:



However, in this  next video, I think the facts being referenced are making some assumptions that need clarification. Mainly, there seems to be an assumption that beef produced and consumed in the U.S. is exchangeable with beef produced in developing countries or that land devoted to beef production is exchangeable for land that could be used for food production purposes. Reducing consumption of beef in the U.S. likely won't have the impacts on consumption in other countries in the simplified way this story is often told.  U.S. beef accounts for .5% or less of global greenhouse gas emissions accounting for fossil fuel and grain consumption, as well as land use alternatives. And most of the land used for beef production isn't suitable for any other type of food production. Ruminants are able to convert inedible plant and fiber on marginal lands to highly palatable nutrient dense food sources. Adding a little grain (accounting for ~ 7% of the U.S. corn crop) can shorten the time grazing and increase production actually decreasing lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions.



I
n this final video, Dr. Frakt discusses how alternative/fake meat products are in fact NOT a healthier alternative to real beef:

The progressive way to deny climate change

Julie Kelly makes an interesting point with this question:

"who are the real deniers: those who are reasonably skeptical about climate change or those who give lots of lip service to it while living a lifestyle totally inimical to every tenet of the climate change creed?"

A different but related argument is given by Steve Horwitz:

“It is perfectly possible to accept the science of global warming but reject the policies most often put forward to combat it.  One can think humans are causing the planet to warm but logically and humanely conclude that we should do nothing about it. In fact, those who think they can go directly from science to policy are, as it turns out, engaged in denial” 

This is not that different from what I have argued before. To me this is the fundamental problem of climate change:

Without being able to accurately predict future damages, or discount them to evaluate them in today's dollars, it's hard to value future climate related gains that today's sacrifices (driving less or smaller or hybrid cars, switching from coal fired electricity to natural gas or solar, changing our diet or other lifestyle changes, lost income or returns from capital investment etc.) will buy. In other words it's hard to know to what extent it makes any sense to do anything about climate change.

Bringing these perspectives together, some of the most ardent proponents of doing something about climate change based on 'science' are in denial about real world workable solutions:

Unfortunately, many of the same people so vocal about adopting policies based on the so called science of climate change (taxes, permits, dietary restrictions, regulations etc.) are also many of the same people that would restrict us (via GMO labeling laws, bans, strict limitations on hormone and antibiotic use, demonization of LFTB via derogatory terms like 'pink slime' etc.) from doing the very things that would have the greatest positive impact on our climate and environment. 

So it seems we have some people that want to as Steve says, jump straight from the science to policy and skip over asking the hard questions or making a critical case for it. At the same time they are they are ignoring real world workable solutions, which are in fact based on solid science, if not actually trying to block them. For progressives of this flavor its not about science, its about invoking the name and prestige of science to override other people's choices while being in denial about rigorous evidence to support their position.

See also:
Doing Nothing: A science based policy prescription for climate change
Facts, Alternative Facts, Evidence, and Marching for Science 
Science + Economics = Sound Policy

Left vs Right Science vs Risk vs Propensity to Regulate

Jayson Lusk has an interesting post on his blog related to an article in the Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics finding an interesting relationship between left leaning voters and their willingness to support GMO labeling initiatives:

“One distinction, which I think is missing, is the greater willingness of those on the left to regulate on economic issues, such as GMOs, than those on the right. Stated differently, there are questions of science: what are the risks of climate change or eating GMOs. And then there are more normative questions: given said risk, what should we do about it? Even if the left and the right agreed on the level of risk, I don’t think we should expect agreement on political action.”


If I understand this correctly, I think this implies that if both those on the left and right agreed that there was some 'day after tomorrow' scenario (in terms of climate change) that warranted some type of government intervention, and they agreed that the science says there is a 3% chance of it happening without the intervention, then those on the right might object to the intervention for that given level of risk while a more left leaning person would support it. A right leaning person might suggest more market based alternatives or taking the gamble. But perhaps if the risk were higher, they might support doing more. In other words there might be different thresholds for the level of risk required to support a given policy interventions across the political spectrum.

Of course, the scientific consensus on climate change may not really even be strong enough to know for sure, i.e. the science isn't settled on exactly what scenarios are likely to play out and the probabilities that they will occur. There's a lot of science to support a wide range of probabilities and scenarios based on a number of assumptions. (see here,  here, here, and here). So really, I think even the science, risk, and potential outcomes or scenarios are largely based on perceptions and these might actually differ significantly across the political spectrum. Maybe its really about perceived risk.

Just thinking about this a little more what if we specified a model of preferences toward government intervention like that below (this is more an illustration than a serious attempt to look at this empirically):

Pr(SUPPORT POLICY) =  B0 + B1 PERCEIVED RISK + B2 KNOWLEDGE

So if we estimated simple linear probability models as specified above for democrats and republicans (as short hand for political preferences) according to the story line above B1 would be higher for democrats than republicans. (I'm ignoring the use of interaction terms on purpose for simplicity) I wonder if this would also be true for B2, for a given level of knowledge, would B2 be higher for democrats/liberals? I also wonder if PERCIEVED RISK is really a function of KNOWLEDGE? Maybe a different specification would look something like:

Pr(SUPPORT POLICY) = B0 + B1 PERCEIVED RISK(KNOWLEDGE)

where PERCEIVED RISK = f(KNOWLEDGE)

So in this case perhaps B1 would still be higher for those with more left leaning politics. Still I wonder, besides this effect, what if its the case that the level or mean of PERCEIVED RISK is in general higher for those on the left? So you have this effect of a greater inclination for a preference for government intervention given a level of PERCEIVED RISK (via B1) but also a population of left leaning voters with a PERCEIVED RISK levels that are on average some magnitude higher. Both of these effects would likely increase the propensity of supporting government intervention.

Consider also....if PERCEIVED RISK = f(KNOWLEDGE), is the level of KNOWLEDGE about GMOs or climate change the same for those on the left and right and is this really what is partly determining different levels of PERCEIVED RISK?  I'm not sure....how often do we hear arguments from the left that drastic actions or mitigating policies to combat climate change are necessary because of the scientific consensus on climate change when in fact the consensus as it is is pretty weak. Too weak to offer much guidance on actions, or very precise estimates of actual risks. (again see here,  here, here, and here). And even some of the world's leading experts in risk modeling tend to have some ideas about GMO risks that can be seriously questioned (see here). There was a really good book a few years back discussing voter preferences and systemic bias regarding economic policy that addressed similar issues (see The Myth of the Rational Voter).

If preferences toward policy can be modeled in this way, an interesting and maybe promising feature is that perhaps the level of knowledge feeding into PERCEIVED risk can be altered. We often hear that science and evidence rarely will change minds when it comes to biotechnology or climate change, however, in a paper recently published by the Journal of the Federation for American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Jayson and Brandon McFadden observed the following:

1) consumers, as a group, are unknowledgeable about GMOs, genetics, and plant breeding and, perhaps more interestingly

 2) simply asking these objective knowledge questions served to lower subjective, self-assessed knowledge of GMOs (i.e., people realize they didn't know as much as they thought they did) and increase the belief that it is safe to eat GM food. 

I'm not  a PhD Economist or Psychometrician but I would think an approach similar to the structural equation modeling framework I discussed before (depicted below) might get closer to specifying and measuring all of the causal paths and connections between latent constructs around risk perception and the policy environment for GMOs or climate change. Of course that would also require a solid data set and valid survey instruments. Jayson's work seems to be leading the way. These are just my initial thoughts prior to even reading the Jayson and McFadden article or the JARE article mentioned above and honestly I have not reviewed much of the actual literature or survey analysis related to risk and perceptions or policy preferences since graduate school. Maybe a lot of this has been done already.

(click to enlarge)

EconTalk: Matt Ridley, Martin Weitzman, Climate Change and Fat Tails

In a recent EconTalk podcast with Russ Roberts, Matt Ridley comments on a previous discussion with Martin Weitzman regarding the tail risk associated with climate change:

"the fat tail on the distribution, the relatively significant even if small possibility of a really big warming has got a heck of a lot thinner in recent years. This is partly because there was a howling mistake in the 2007 IPCC Report, the AR4 Report (Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change, 2007), where a graph was actually distorted. And a brilliant scientist named Nick Lewis pointed this out later. It's one of the great, shocking scandals of this, that a graph--and I'm literally talking about the shape of the tail of the graph--was distorted to make a fatter tail than is necessary. When you correct that, the number gets smaller. When you feed in all these 14 papers that I've been talking about, all the latest observational data, 42 scientists involved in publishing this stuff, most of the mainstream scientists--I'm not talking about skeptics here--when you feed all that in and you get the average probability density functions for climate sensitivity, they turn out to have much thinner tails than was portrayed in the 2007. And that Martin Weitzman is basing his argument on. So the 10% chance of 6 degrees of warming in 100 years becomes much less than 1% if you look at these charts now."

Very interesting, because I thought Weitzman's discussion of tail risk was compelling. Unlike Nassem Taleb's characterization of tail risk and GMOs. I think a key to policy analysis must  revolve around getting the distribution correct, particularly the tails of the distribution, then getting the discount rate correct as well. Will there ever truly be a consensus in relation to climate change policy?

EconTalk: Matt Ridly on Climate Change Consensus

In a fairly recent EconTalk podcast with Russ Roberts, Matt Ridley discusses the consensus about climate change:

"if it's true that 97% of scientists are all of a particular view about climate, then let's go and ask what that view is. And if you go and look at the origin of that figure, it was that a certain poll--of 79 scientists, by the way, an extraordinarily small sample--said that, 97% of them agreed that human beings had influenced climate and that carbon dioxide was greenhouse gas....it's not referring to a consensus about dangerous climate change. It's referring to a consensus about humans' ability to affect the climate."

This is similar to what I wrote before back in 2008  after actually reading the IPCC 4th Assessment report. And more recently I have commented on how difficult it may be to solve the knowledge problem and actually attempt to price carbon (for which there is no consensus), and given this consensus view, from a policy perspective, the science just might not support doing anything drastic to try to stop climate change (i.e. carbon taxes, CAFE standards, other regulations).

So I continue to think that you don't  necessarily have to be a climate change skeptic or 'denier' to be a denier on climate policy (or at least push back a little)

Stacking Technology In Stockers Adds Up To More Pounds | Stocker/Backgrounders content from BEEF Magazine

This equates to a lower carbon footprint and improved sustainability. All market driven. Good for the environment, the producer,and the consumer. 

"Cattle receiving an ionophore either gain more on the same amount of feed or gain the same on less feed," Sawyer explains. "Generally speaking, with stocker calves on pastures of reasonable quality, we expect an increased rate of gain of 8%-12%, so maybe an extra 20-25 lbs. in a typical turn of stocker calves."

http://m.beefmagazine.com/stockerbackgrounders/stacking-technology-stockers-adds-more-pounds?page=2

Antarctic Melt And Calls For Action | On Point with Tom Ashbrook

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2014/05/20/antarctic-melt-carbon-tax

Ashbrook asks, if the market were the answer and not a carbon tax, then why aren't we seeing anything from the market? And that is the issue, we could have said the same thing about mail and parcel delivery before email and UPS, and who saw google, Wikipedia, and Netflix on the horizon? The hybrid cars, wind farms, and solar seem like obvious solutions that the government has poured lots of money into. But the market's solution will not be so blatant and obvious as a government tax or subsidy, and Ashbrook's question will never have an obvious answer. Modern hybrid corn with no subsidy or tax for instance has done more to combat climate change than hybrid cars in the US.

Our Stake in GHG Emissions

I recently saw this tweet (which I'll keep anonymous out of respect of the author):

"We all cause greenhouse gases to be released into the sky; but most of us do not have special interest in continuing to do so"

I'm not sure that is true. Of course, it's true we don't all have special interests in the context of a team of lobbyists and a corporate rent seeking apparatus. But we all do have an interest in GHGs being released into the sky. We all enjoy refrigeration, air conditioning, transportation, fire, police, and rescue services, as well as telecommunications, personal computing, smartphones, iPads, google wickipedia, Instagram etc. Access to all of these goods and services at affordable prices involve trade offs related to GHG emissions and we all have direct interests in their continual release into the atmosphere, and indirect but strong interests in the 'special' interests that work to keep that path as clear and unobstructed as possible.

Hybrid Corn vs. Hybrid Cars

Which is better for the environment, hybrid corn (with biotech traits) or hybrid cars? Which is most easily adaptable and consumable on a scale large enough to have any meaningful impact on the environment? Which can be achieved most easily through social cooperation vs. manipulation and coercion?  I’ll answer these questions and more below. 

According to research from PG Economics, in 2009 alone,  greenhouse gas reductions associated with biotechnology were equivalent to removing 7.8 million cars from the road. I like to contrast this with the stats related to the much beloved hybrid car. Worldwide there have been only about 1.6 million hybrid cars sold as of 2009.  As far as cars on the road, the US and Japan have about 600,000.  And, I understand that the Obama Administration is calling for  1 million plug in hybrids on the highway by 2015. 

 So with hybrids we are talking a few million cars at most, that  are still on the road, and still one way or another require electricity, coal, or gasoline, which still creates pollution.  And there is all of this hype and interest in government setting mandates or creating subsidies to coerce consumers into buying hybrids. 

 Of course, if we all drove hybrids the impact might dwarf the 7.8 million figure above, but we would still have to net out the effects of driving hybrids.  It would take more than 7.8 million hybrids to match the green impact of biotech!  And it might take a lot of coercion and incentivization by government. We don't have to make a huge change in our lifestyle to consume biotech foods! 

That's not counting the positive impact of biotech and pharmaceutical technologies in beef and dairy  production.

" the carbon footprint for a gallon of milk produced in 2007 was only 37 percent of that produced in 1944. Improved efficiency has enabled the U.S. dairy industry to produce 186 billion pounds of milk from 9.2 million cows in 2007, compared to only 117 billion pounds of milk from 25.6 million cows in 1944. This has resulted in a 41 percent decrease in the total carbon footprint for U.S. milk production." 

And

“Grain feeding combined with growth promotants also results in a nearly 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gases (GHGs) per pound of beef compared to grass feeding (excluding nitrous oxides), with growth promotants accounting for fully 25 percent of the emissions reductions”

References:

GM crops: global socio-economicand environmental impacts 1996-2009. Brookes and Barfoot.

http://www.tech-faq.com/hybrid-cars.html

http://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/How_Many_Hybrid_Cars_Are_on_the_Road

The Environmental Safety and Benefits of Growth Enhancing Pharmaceutical Technologies in Beef Production. By Alex Avery and Dennis Avery, Hudson Institute, Centre for Global Food Issues.

Organic, Natural and Grass-Fed Beef: Profitability and constraints to Production in the Midwestern U.S. Nicolas Acevedo John D. Lawrence Margaret Smith August, 2006. Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture)

The environmental impact of dairy production: 1944 compared with 2007. Journal of Animal Science,Capper, J. L., Cady, R. A., Bauman, D. E. 2009; 87 (6): 2160 DOI: 10.2527/jas.2009-1781

Can we and should we really price carbon?

“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.” - Frederick Hayek

What some people think about climate economics:

What economists must do then is take consensus science into account, and approximate what the price of carbon should be to limit economic damages from CO2. This level will be achieved where the marginal cost of reducing carbon emissions is equal to the benefits of decreased damages from climate change in the future.  

What some people believe to be the current state of the art of climate economics:

Nordhaus ( Using the DICE-2007 model, and based on the science of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report) prices carbon at about $30/ ton, with the average person in the US generating about 5tons/yr, for a total of about $150/year, or .09 /gallon of gas and .01/kwh for electricity. However, the Stern Proposal(proposed by another economist in the U.K) estimates the damage from global warming to be closer to $300/ton carbon for the next two decades. In this case we are looking at increasing gas prices by about $1.20/gallon. (read more)

Discussion:

Let's ponder, who is right, and how can economics narrow the gap between these approaches?

Carbon Taxes
 
The idea of pricing carbon is that given the assumption that CO2 production has a negative impact on climate change and so many goods and services are carbon intensive, if we can put a price on carbon (paid by corporations that trade carbon permits or a carbon tax)  to capture the value of the negative externality, this will 'trickle down' to the mirco level, such that when you buy an ice cream cone, gasoline, or a pencil, the impact of your choice on the climate will be captured in the price you pay for it.  This is the climate change knowledge problem. We have to get the initial price of CO2 correct so that the 'trickle down' economics works at the micro level and we ward off catastrophic climate change.

The correct price for carbon will balance the marginal cost of reducing carbon emissions with benefits of decreased damages from climate change in the future.  As Armstrong points out, there are few scientific forecasts related to these future damages. And technological change allows us to continually respond the volatile effects of climate change. Advances in biotechnology are allowing us to produce more climate resilient crops, all the while reducing our carbon footprint in agriculture.  How can we incorporate this knowledge into our calculus? When it comes to the costs of reducing carbon emissions, it isn’t any easier. What are the opportunity costs of resources invested in emissions mitigation (voluntarily vs. those mandated or incentivised by government administered prices for carbon)?   

Tradeable Permits

Some will argue that instead of a tax, you can get similar or superior results by defining property rights in the form of carbon credits or tradeable permits. Then markets can solve the information problem via the price mechanism that manifests in the trading of permits. The problem still stands. Someone has to initially assign some quantity of permits to 'polluters.' This quantity has to be based on some determination of an 'optimal' quantity of CO2 emissions. This also requires the information necessary for determining the marginal benefits and costs of each associated unit of CO2.  The knowledge problem has not been solved, just reformulated in a way that is equivalently intractable for planners to solve. Unless planners get this quantity right, the price that 'trickles down' at the micro level for all goods and services will be too high or too low, based on the artificial scarcity or excess created by the planners’ miscalculation. The classic example of the Coase Theorem solves the externality of pollution of common property like a lake by clearly assigning property rights. The optimal level or quantity of pollution is a separate problem solved by the price mechanism via subsequent exchanges of property rights or contracting. In the case of CO2, the assignment of property rights and the optimal quantity of pollution both have to simultaneously be determined. You have to determine some initial quantity of pollution in order to create the permits (which a are then traded to establish a price).

From the Capitalism Today Blog at Western Kentucky University there was recently a discussion regarding macroeconomic equilibrium and the difficulties of knowing the micro-level equilibrium for something (seemingly) as simple as ice cream:

"They act as if not only there is equilibrium, but that they know where it is.  If anyone knows exactly how many ice cream cones the US needs to produce tomorrow, please raise your hands.  What no hands?  No one can know the “appropriate” amount of ice cream cone production for today let alone for tomorrow.  The $15 trillion US economy makes a lot more than just ice cream cones."

I think this analogy may also apply to pricing carbon. Ice cream comes in lots of varieties and flavors, produced and marketed various ways (natural, conventional, biotech, hormone free, organic, home made, store bought, ice cream trucks, retail outlets). Ice cream is pretty differentiated when you think about it. What about carbon? Noone knows how to set a 'national' or even a 'local' price for items as seemingly simple as ice cream or pencils, or the correct quantity  that our complex world requires.  Why do we expect carbon to be any different than ice cream or pencils? Even if economists like Nordhous and Stern were in agreement, their solutions would not sufficiently deal with climate change's knowledge problem.

Some will agree that planners are no match for markets in determining prices and quantities, but because we currently have no established property rights to the atmosphere there is no 'price' for carbon. As such, there are going to be consequences if we do nothing, and the next best solution is an attempt, even if not perfect, to price carbon because it is not considered in market transactions.

Is that really the next best solution and is it true that the price mechanism totally ignores CO2? 
 
What is carbon really? 'Carbon' in an economy manifests itself in how we heat and cool our homes, how we manufacture goods and services, how we respond to emergencies, how we travel and transport goods, how we store and retrieve information. Leonard E. Read's essay I, Pencil demonstrates  the complexity involved in an economy that thrives on disaggregated information and processes with numerous feedback loops and interactions.  In a complex society, carbon is no different, and while it may not be explicitly and directly priced, it is hard to believe that its role is not part of the pool of knowledge characterized by the partial bits of information held by all individuals in society.

In fact, while politicians and special interests argue over the politically optimal arrangement of regulatory protections and subsidies to 'combat climate change' markets have responded in much more meaningful ways without any bureaucratically administered price of carbon or cap on CO2.

As Dr. Don Boudreaux of George Mason University points out in a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, in response to climate alarmists’ connecting violent storms and climate change (and obviously calling for centralized solutions to combat it): (read more)

 "...because of modern industrial and technological advances—radar, stronger yet lighter building materials, more reliable electronic warning devices, and longer-lasting packaged foods—we are better protected from nature's fury today than at any other time in human history."

Perhaps the innovations in green technologies in agriculture provide the greatest example of mitigating climate change:

Total decreases in carbon dioxide as a result of using biotech crops was equivalent to removing 6 million cars from the road in 2007. The carbon footprint for a gallon of milk produced in 2007 was only 37 percent of that produced in 1944. For every 1 million cows, the reduction in global warming potential from rBST supplemented cows is equivalent to removing 400K cars from the roadways or planting 300 million trees. The use of grain and pharmaceutical technology in beef production has resulted in a nearly 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gases (GHGs) per pound of beef compared to grass feeding. Intensive agriculture has actually has a mitigating effect on climate change with a reduction of 68 kgC (249 kgCO2e) emissions relative to 1961 technology. (read more)

Conclusion:

We are not really sure how to price carbon, and what we observe in all of these instances is that despite the absence of a centrally planned price or quantity of carbon, people are making choices that optimize its use or production. A centralized approach to rationing carbon requires resources to be invested in two major ways: 1) lobbying lawmakers to tweak the proposed rules and regulations 2) complying with the burdens of a centrally planned price or quantity. Should we assume that the use of resources in this way have a higher valued use than mitigating climate change in other ways (like market driven investment in green technologies like biotech)? The best approach to dealing with climate change or any environmental problem may be to develop resilient market based economies that are able to invest in the technology necessary to adapt to ever changing resource constraints.