The notion that “greenies” are coming for the Aussie barbecue and want to rip that eye fillet from your cold dead hands is a recurring culture war flash point for many conservatives.
Last week came a flood of media stories and furious commentary that claimed the government’s Climate Change Authority (CCA) had recommended people eat less red meat to bring down greenhouse gas emissions.
Stories in the Australian and Daily Mail claimed the authority had suggested the change in a new report.
Over at Sky News Australia, it was full throttle at the outrage factory, with at least four segments suggesting an “extreme green” government authority had a “manifesto” to cut red meat consumption.
In a social media post, 7News put it this way: “Beef and lamb would come off the menu in favour of proteins like kangaroo if the Climate Change Authority had its way. The government agency has suggested the diet change to Anthony Albanese saying a reduction in consumption of red meat would lower greenhouse gas emissions.”
The Coalition frontbench MP Barnaby Joyce claimed it was the latest example of governments trying to control people’s lives.
“Now they are telling you what you can eat,” he said. “They are coming in all the time on your liberties … make a statement for your freedom and eat meat.”
The problem is this: The authority made no such recommendation.
‘Recommendations’ section doesn’t exist
“When will this nonsense stop?” asked the Nationals MP Keith Pitt. That’s a good question.
But first, a little context.
According to disclosures the government makes as part of the UN Paris climate agreement, in 2022 the methane produced by the cattle herd and emitted mostly in burps was responsible for 40Mt of CO2-equivalent. That was about 9% of Australia’s emissions that year, so is not insignificant.
The furore over the last week comes from the CCA’s 230-page “Sector Pathways Review” discussing the potential for emissions reductions across six sectors, from electricity and transport to agriculture and buildings.
The report’s section on “recommendations” says nothing, because it doesn’t exist.
Media outlets jumped on one sentence from the report, which said: “An emissions reduction contribution could be achieved through switching preferences away from higher-emissions products, such as beef and lamb, towards animal meats with a lower emissions intensity, such as chicken, pork and kangaroo.”
The report also noted that in recent decades, Australians had already shifted from beef and lamb and towards less emissions-intensive pork and chicken. These shifts in consumption “could represent another pathway to reducing emissions from meat production,” the report said.
But the report also said any changes in people’s eating habits “may have limited impact on total beef production in Australia in the near term” because about 78% of beef produced in Australia is exported.
In a statement, the authority said the review “observed that while beef consumption has been relatively stable for many decades, there has been a dietary shift towards pork and chicken.”
“However, the authority did not recommend Australians eat less red meat to reduce emissions. This will be driven by consumers’ preferences,” the statement said.
The review, the statement said, found emissions from agriculture and land could be cut by measures such as better herd and pasture management, feed supplements to reduce methane from herds, more use of biodiesel fuels and battery electric vehicles on farms and limiting deforestation.”
Meat culture wars
We have been here before, where claims by commentators that an authority has recommended people eat less red meat turns out to be false.
A few years ago, conservatives were claiming the UN said “you can only have 14g of meat a day” to meet climate targets.
The UN’s call was “madness” and “absurd” even though the UN recommendation never actually happened (it was an idea put by a speaker at UN-backed food conference).
But the idea that cutting red meat consumption could help lower emissions is hardly new in Australia, or anywhere else.
Sixteen years ago, the major Garnaut review of climate crisis effects and policy responses also said if Australians substituted red meat for “less emissions-intensive meat, such as chicken and pork”, as well as kangaroo meat, it could lower emissions.
Needlessly costly?
What would a Donald Trump victory in the upcoming US presidential election mean for climate?
Analysis by Carbon Brief earlier this year suggested a Trump victory could see an extra 4bn tonnes of CO2 added to the atmosphere, compared with the US government’s current policy settings under Joe Biden.
This week, the Australian’s foreign editor, Greg Sheridan, took a different angle, claiming a Trump victory – and the rollback of climate-friendly policies that would result – would cast shade on the Albanese government’s efforts to decarbonise.
This would make the government’s energy policy “look even more unrealistic, and needlessly costly, than it does now”, wrote Sheridan, making it harder for Albanese “to argue that Australia must suffer vastly greater energy prices in order to keep faith with the allegedly global compact on climate change (which of course is not remotely global).”
Blaming current high electricity and energy bills on policies to decarbonise is a favourite among the Australian right, even though there’s no evidence for it.
In fact, according to recent analysis by the International Energy Agency, the opposite is true.
The agency looked at the affordability of energy to consumers under two scenarios – one where governments around the world carry on with the policies they have now, and one where they drive forward to reach net zero emissions by 2050.
The cost of running an energy system in a world driving to net zero was less than half that in a world where the policies in place today remain, the analysis said.
“The data makes it clear that the quicker you move on clean energy transitions, the more cost effective it is for governments, businesses and households,” said Dr Fatih Birol, the agency’s executive director.
The way to make energy more affordable was “to speed up transitions, not slow them down,” Birol said.
