ARE BURPS AND FLATULENCE FROM BEEF CATTLE REALLY PROBLEMS THAT REQUIRE A CARBON TAX?

Martin Programme on the Future of Food at Oxford University in England. The researchers calculated the food-tax rates necessary to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to match the obligations of the Paris climate accord. Beef, as the biggest culprit, is saddled with the highest tax rate of 40 per rising levels of obesity. “Levying greenhouse gas taxes on food commodities could … be a health-promoting climate policy in high-income countries,” they claim. But in poor countries, as the authors show, it would be health destroying.

Under the Oxford plan, deaths from malnourishment would increase in povertystricken countries such as Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Nepal and Myanmar. Yet this is a trade-off they seem prepared to accept. “We found that the health benefits from taxrelated reductions in obesity could outweigh the health losses from increased numbers of underweight people in three-quarters of all regions,” the report says, chillingly.

A global green tax on food presents a horrifying moral dilemma. It also threatens to undo much of the world’s remarkable climb out of poverty and hunger in recent decades. Between 1990 and 2009, per capita world consumption of meat rose by 25 per cent, with much of that increase coming in developing countries where residents were able to add animal protein to their diet thanks to rising income. Choking off their access to meat through tax hikes would cruelly deny these people and their families the ability to improve their own health and lives, and seems like the worst kind of Western environmental colonialism. (Claims from meat-tax advocates that everyone can simply eat bugs for protein is just crass — and gross).

In Canada, a carbon tax on beef might not kill anyone outright, but it would certainly make everyone poorer and less happy. But beyond the outrageous imposition of government diktat on individual food choices, the entire concept of a meat tax does a grave disservice to the Canadian agricultural sector. While nearly a third of total greenhouse gas emissions may be due to food production globally, here in Canada that figure is a mere eight per cent. Meanwhile, since 1981, emissions specifically traceable to beef production have fallen by 15 per cent due to substantial improvements in feeding, care and land use. Our meat is better for the environment than meat from almost any other place on earth. A kilogram of beef from Brazil, Argentina or Kenya, for example, is responsible for nearly twice the carbon emissions as a kilogram of beef from Alberta. Forget taxing it. Let’s feed the world with Canadian beef. number of firms abiding by it, but it fails to take into account the very particular character of each corporation, the specific nature of its industry, the time horizon of its strategy implementation and the drivers of its value creation. It is prudent for a board to comply with the approach described above; any deviation risks incurring disfavour with proxy advisors, an influential lot in this matter.

Boards of directors of large, publicly listed corporations are keenly aware of the limitations of the current standardized methods of setting executive pay. But it is very difficult and hazardous for any particular board to deviate from the standard approach. Board chairs of the TSX 60 companies should get together and agree on a different way of setting compensation. A common approach adopted by a large number of TSX 60 companies would be very effective in standing up to proxy advisors and moving forward on this seemingly intractable issue. Otherwise, this festering compensation sore will continue to erode their legitimacy and credibility with investors and the general population.