A recent Washington Post (WaPo) article, “Amsterdam’s ban on advertising hamburgers won’t stop climate change,” blasts a new law in Amsterdam banning advertisements for meat in public spaces. The order is meant to decrease the demand for meat to stop climate change. The WaPo Editorial Board has the correct reaction. It is ridiculous and authoritarian to try to control what people eat and will have no impact on weather or global climate.
As WaPo points out, “[c]ensoring ads for beef, pork, chicken, and even fish won’t reduce carbon emissions. Nor will it make people less hungry for protein and other nutrients essential to a healthy diet.” WaPo says that European green activists are “so hypnotized by climate hysteria and the belief that it poses an “existential threat” that they rationalize authoritarianism.”
WaPo is correct. The focus of the “eating meat causes climate change” argument is that cattle produce methane, which contributes to warming. It is completely absurd to think that reducing meat consumption in Amsterdam would have any real impact whatsoever on that, even if the base theory is correct. According to EPA data, all the cows in the United States contribute just about 2 percent of U.S. greenhouse gases, with a population of around 90 million cattle. There are only about 4 million cattle in the Netherlands.
The Dutch certainly do not eat only Dutch beef, but the population of Amsterdam’s metropolitan area is around 1.6 million people, comparable to Phoenix, Arizona or Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Large cities to be sure, but not large enough for their eating habits to make a dent in global climate. It is absurd on its face. Even worse, it is an authoritarian restriction on free speech for a non-harmful activity.
Climate Realism has noted on multiple occasions that targeting cattle and meat eating will not change the weather or slow global warming. Amsterdam, according to WaPo, “has set a totally unrealistic goal for residents to get 60 percent of their protein from plant-based sources by 2030.” It is unclear why Amsterdam officials believe that energy-intensive, highly processed plant-based alternatives to meat are better for the environment than all-natural meat and egg. This is a clear authoritarian overstep by what was supposed to be a democratic government. But it’s not the first time Dutch officials went climate-crazy and targeted food. In 2023, the state put forward schemes to forcibly shut down farms across the country, buy out farmers, and force them into contracts that would ban them from moving to other countries to farm elsewhere. A political backlash resulted in the nation’s government moderating its plans.
They want to push what farmers remain to go all-organic, which ironically means they will need more land to produce anywhere near the same output because yields will fall, resulting in higher overall emissions.
These schemes are, as WaPo correctly stated, both unrealistic and authoritarian. Human beings are omnivorous, meat-eating animals. The fats and proteins in meat are essential for brain development. Our guts are evolved to process meat from animals whose guts are evolved to process roughage we can’t eat. There is no climate benefit from reducing meat consumption, nor is there any other kind of environmental benefit. The government of Amsterdam is overstepping, with no scientific backing. So much for the Netherlands being a bastion of liberty and the free exchange of ideas.
