Designing a "Made in America" Meat Tax

Abstract

Agriculture is the fourth largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States, and agriculture is the largest national source of methane emissions in particular. Yet regulators have paid far less attention to emissions from agriculture than from transportation and electricity, the top two sources of GHG emissions nationally. This Article seeks to put the idea of a meat tax on the agenda of scholars and climate policymakers as a tool for reducing GHG emissions from agriculture. Drawing on scholarship and policy proposals from other jurisdictions, where discussions of taxing meat are further advanced, this Article identifies key issues that would need to be addressed to design a meat tax that could be implemented in the United States. It also recommends an iterative modelling process to devise concrete proposals for an equitable meat tax that would reduce agricultural GHG emissions. A meat tax could be one tool in a basket of policy measures designed to reduce emissions from agriculture. In addition, reducing human consumption of meat would have the ancillary benefits of improving human health and animal welfare, as well as the environment.