Is Meat the New Tobacco? Regulating Food Demand in the Age of Climate Change
| Date | 01 April 2019 |
| Author |
49 ELR 10344 ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REPORTER 4-2019
ARTICLES
Is Meat the New
Tobacco?
Regulating Food
Demand in the
Age of Climate
Change
Lingxi Chenyang
Lingxi Chenyang is a J.D. candidate at
Yale Law School and Ph.D. candidate in
Philosophy at the University of Michigan.
Summary
Switching from a meat-heavy to a plant-based diet is
one of the highest-impact lifestyle changes for climate
mitigation and adaptation. However, conventional
demand-side energy policy has focused on increasing
consumption of ecient machines and fuels. Regu-
lating food demand has key advantages. First, food
consumption is biologically constrained, thus switch-
ing to more ecient foods avoids unintended conse-
quences of switching to more ecient machines, like
higher overall energy consumption. Second, food
consumption, like smoking, is primed for norm-
shifting because it occurs in socially conspicuous
environments. Indeed, while place-based bans and
information regulation were essential in lowering the
prevalence of smoking, the same strategies may be
even more eective in reducing meat demand. Sev-
eral policy reforms can be implemented at the federal
level, from reform of food marketing schemes to pub-
licly subsidized meal programs.
We do need to do all those legal reg ulations you are pro-
posing, but if we real ly want to clean up the environ-
ment, we are also going to need to ma ke lifestyle chan ges.
—Richard Nixon, to top EPA and CEQ ocia ls,
19711
At the 2018 conference of the United Nations (U.N.)
Framework Convention on Climate Change in
Katowice, Poland, delegates dined on beef with
smoked bacon, dumplings with fried pork and beef, and
cheeseburgers.2 Had all 22,000 delegates chosen meat-
based dishes, the 12-day conference would have spent the
carbon equivalent of ying 5,200 people from New York
to Los Angeles.
Fifty years prior, Dr. Paul Kotin, director of the Envi-
ronmental Health Sciences Division at the National Insti-
tutes of Health, was testif ying in the U.S. Congress about
the health haza rds of cigarettes when a senator interrupted,
“Is it going to prejudice anybody if I smoke my pipe?” Dr.
Kotin replied: “I trust it won’t prejudice anybody any more
than my smoking my pipe will.”3
Addressing large-scale social problems like tobacco
and climate change requires institutional and individual
transformation. According to the latest Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, “aggressive poli-
cies” are necessary to li mit global warming to 1.5 degrees
Celsius (°C) to avoid catastrophic harm on natura l and
human systems.4 But lowering consumer demand for green-
house gas (GHG)- and energy-intensive goods like food w ill
be a “key element” of preventing global temperatures f rom
reaching an ethically unacceptable level.5 Sw itching from
a meat-heavy to a plant-based diet is one of the highest-
1. E-Mail from E. Donald Elliott, Professor of Law, Yale Law School, to
author (Mar. 11, 2019) (on le with author) (referencing in-person in-
terview with Roger Strelow, Chief of Sta of the Council on Environ-
mental Quality).
2. Deena Shanker, U.N. Conference Features Meat (and Emissions) Heavy
Menu, B, Dec. 3, 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/
articles/2018-12-03/un-climate-conference-features-meat-and-emissions-
heavy-menu.
3. See infra note 108 at 41.
4. Joeri Rogelj et al., IPCC, Mitigation Pathways Compatible With 1.5°C in the
Context of Sustainable Development, in G W 1.5°C 93, 149
(V. Masson-Delmotte et al. eds., IPCC 2018), https://www.ipcc.ch/site/as-
sets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SR15_Chapter2_Low_Res.pdf.
5. Id. at 97.
Author’s Note: e author would like to thank Irina Anta, Rebecca
Boehm, Christopher Walker, Daniel Giusti, Manny Rutinel,
Kevin Poloncarz, Yan Yang, and Profs. Joshua Galperin, Kenneth
Gillingham, Douglas Kysar, Zachary Liscow, and Narasimha Rao
for their valuable thoughts and criticisms on earlier versions of
this Article. Special thanks goes to Prof. E. Donald Elliott for his
mentorship and support.
Copyright © 2019 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120.
4-2019 NEWS & ANALYSIS 49 ELR 10345
impact individual lifest yle changes for climate mitigation,
avoiding four times more carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions
than recycling a nd eight times more emissions than switch-
ing to ecient light bulbs.6 ere is signicant room for
improvement: U.S. per capita meat consumption is three
times the global average and fa r above the recommended
nutritional qu antit y.7
Despite growing public awareness about food’s cli-
mate impac ts,8 convention al demand-side energy policy
has focused on increasing consumption of more ecient
transportation and home appliances using tax credits and
other na ncing programs.9 e much-anticipated Green
New Deal extends this framework, proposing to overhaul
transportation systems a nd upgrade buildings to “achieve
maxima l energy eciency,” yet it mentions nothing about
shifting consumer dema nd toward low-emissions foods.10
Part of the problem is that food is not conceived of as an
energy re source, unli ke the chemica l, thermal, a nd electric
energies used to power modern machines. is concep-
tual distinction is reected in the separation of agricul-
ture and energy in legislat ion and admini strative agencies.
But food is a chemical energy necessary to power human
bodies. Modern food production also requires signicant
amounts of conventional energy inputs like petroleum.
Dierent foods can therefore be disting uished based on
conventional energy standards li ke eciency and environ-
mental impact.11
6. Id. at 112. See also Seth Wynes & Kimberly Nicholas, e Climate Change
Mitigation Gap: Education and Government Recommendations Miss the Most
Eective Individual Actions, 12 E. R. L 1 (2017). Calls for
drastic reductions in meat consumption have become pitched in the past
year. See Damian Carrington, Huge Reduction in Meat-Eating “Essential”
to Avoid Climate Breakdown, G, Oct. 10, 2018, https://www.the-
guardian.com/environment/2018/oct/10/huge-reduction-in-meat-eating-
essential-to-avoid-climate-breakdown; Joel Achenbach, Earth’s Population Is
Skyrocketing. How Do You Feed 10 Billion People Sustainably?, W. P,
Oct. 10, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2018/10/10/
how-will-or-billion-people-eat-without-destroying-environment/.
7. See Joseph Poore & omas Nemecek, Reducing Food’s Environmental Im-
pacts rough Producers and Consumers, 360 S 987, 991 (2018). See
also infra note 123.
8. See Carrington, supra note 6 and Achenbach supra note 6. See also Somini
Sengupta, New Diet Guidelines to Benet People and the Planet: More Greens
for All, Less Meat for Some, N.Y. T, Jan. 16, 2019, https://www.nytimes.
com/2019/01/16/climate/meat-environment-climate-change.html.
9. See, e.g., Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, Pub. L. No. 94-
163, §§321-339, 89 Stat. 871 (mandating vehicle fuel economy standards);
Energy Policy Act of 2005, Pub. L. No. 109-58, §§1332-37 (creating tax
credit for energy-ecient appliances and construction of energy-ecient
buildings); Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, Pub. L. No.
110-140, §§102, 301-325, 121 Stat. 1492, (raising vehicle fuel eciency
standards and revising eciency standards for home appliances and light-
ing); and Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008, Pub. L. No.
110-343 §205 (creating tax credit for plug-in electric vehicles).
10. H.R.J. Res. 109, 116th Cong. (2019). See also Jedediah Britton-Purdy, e
Green New Deal Is What Realistic Environmental Policy Looks Like, N.Y.
T, Feb. 14, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/opinion/
green-new-deal-ocasio-cortez-.html.
11. Jonathan Lovvorn, Clean Food: e Next Clean Energy Revolution, 36 Y
L. P’ R. 283 (2018).
Modern meat production not only ineciently con-
verts edible grains and fossil fuels into human food, but
also imposes concentrated, local environmental harms on
communities. Substitutes include plant-based proteins
like beans and pea nut butter, plant-based “meats” like veg-
gie burgers, cultured meat, and animal meat grown using
climate-sustainable agricultural practices. Transitioning
to a mix of these alternatives will likely result in lower
fuel use and avoided deforestation to mitigate the eects
of climate change. Eating less meat also aids adaptation
by freeing up resources to address the food insecurity
that will only be further exacerbated by climate cha nge.12
According to some estimates, shif ting U.S. demand for
beef to plant-based proteins alone can feed an additional
190 million people.13
Regulating food dema nd has several advantages over
conventional demand-side energy polic y.14 First, because
food consumption is biologically constrained, switching
to more ecient foods may avoid unintended demand-
side consequences of switching to more ecient machines,
like higher overall energy c onsumption. Second, a large
array of lower-emissions foods is already available, whereas
switching to alternative fuels and machines requires sub-
stantially more time and money for research, develop-
ment, and deployment at scale. ird, food consumption
is primed for norm-shifting because food is purchased and
eaten in conspicuous social situations, unlike f uel and elec-
tricity use. As a result, non-price strategies like informa-
tional campaigns and place-based food substitutions may
be especially eect ive in shifting consumer demand away
from conventionally-produced meat.
Similarly, tobacco for most of the 20th century was
woven into the American social fabric, yet unraveled in t he
latter half-centu ry.15 Some of the most eective anti-tobacco
regulations were place-based smoking ba ns and mass media
12. See Prasanna Gowda et al., Agriculture and Rural Communities, in I,
R, A U S: F N C-
A, V II 391 (D.R. Reidmiller et al. eds., U.S. Global
Change Research Program 2018).
13. By comparison, 151 million children are stunted globally due to low di-
etary quality. Walter Willett et al., Food in the Anthropocene: e EAT-Lancet
Commission on Healthy Diets From Sustainable Food Systems, 393 L
447 (2019), available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31788-
4. See also Gidon Eshel et al., Environmentally Optimal, Nutritionally Aware
Beef Replacement Plant-Based Diets, 50 E. S. T. 8164-68
(2016).
14. See, e.g., Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, Pub. L. No. 94-163,
89 Stat. 871 (mandating vehicle fuel economy standards); Energy Indepen-
dence and Security Act of 2007, Pub. L. No. 110-140, 121 Stat. 1492 (in-
creasing vehicle fuel eciency standards and revising eciency standards for
home appliances and lighting).
15. is comparison between meat and tobacco is not new. See, e.g., Elle Hunt,
Meatonomics’ David Robinson Simon: “Everything I Envision for Meat Has
Happened With Tobacco,” G, June 7, 2017, https://www.theguard-
ian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/07/meatonomics-david-robinson-simon-
everything-i-envision-for-meat-has-happened-with-tobacco.
Copyright © 2019 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120.
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