The meat war is politics as usual, which sucks for climate action

There’s a culture war between conservatives and liberals over meat. And the debate once again stalls climate action.

There’s been a lot of anger over meat lately.

After a Daily Mail article falsely claimed that President Joe Biden’s climate targets would require Americans to slash their meat consumption by 90%, conservatives took to social media and TV to express outrage.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) called Biden “The Hamburglar,” and Gov. Greg Abbot (R-TX) said dietary cuts were “not gonna happen in Texas!” Meanwhile, Donald Trump, Jr., bragged(?) about eating four pounds of meat in a day.

This sounds like just another day of toxicity rooted in misinformation, but reducing the discussion to “partisan politics” would ignore the overarching implications. As HEATED wrote this week, this rhetoric is part of a larger culture war between conservatives and liberals over meat. And that debate once again stalls climate action.

Animal agriculture makes up at least 14% of human-caused emissions. Meat production also releases large amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas at least 84 times more potent than CO2 over a 20-year span.

And these emissions are disproportionately condensed in American’s diets. In 2018, the U.S. consumed roughly 21% of all beef consumed globally, despite making up just 4% of the global population.

No, Biden doesn’t mention diet change anywhere in his climate plan, but it feels foolish to assume we can meet his recent pledge to slash emissions 50–52% by 2030 without curbing our appetite for beef.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Like oil in Texas and coal in Appalachia, cattle ranches and cheeseburgers are inherently American. Several regions — Memphis, Kansas City, St. Louis, and all of Texas — pride themselves in their barbeque.

As my colleague Sam wrote in our newsletter this week, “To take away meat would be to take away an American way of life.”

But Americana isn’t the only thing that connects fossil fuels and meat. The meat industry also employs misinformation strategies — just like oil and gas companies, and tobacco companies before them — to sow doubt in consumers’ minds. A recent study finds that meat companies have spent millions to blur the lines between animal agriculture and climate change.

All this strategizing is working because Americans keep chowing down on red meat — from 2019 to 2020, beef sales jumped nearly 25% year-over-year.

That diet, however, is less a middle finger to climate action as it is a response to a perceived threat. Just as gun sales spike after talks of gun regulation (which typically coincide with mass shootings), beef sales continue to rise despite growing scientific consensus of threats the meat industry poses to the Planet.

Americans are warming to cleaner alternatives in other industries, so long as they’re viable. Electric vehicles are gaining popularity, for example, as Ford and GM invest billions in the sector. And the United Mine Workers of America, the largest coal miners union in the U.S., just supported a clean energy future, assuming their workers are part of the transition.

But what’s on our plate is a different story. Though plant-based meats have indeed made some headway, we’re still years, if not decades, from meaningfully shifting from these high-carbon diets.

The bottom line, though, is if we continue to consume meat at this rate, not only will our arteries suffer — so will the Planet.