Yes, the world is on fire. Yes, there are barely ten years to put it out. Yes, that will require some tough changes. Yes, you can eat your cheeseburger without being paranoid about killing the world.  

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, only 9% of carbon emissions in the United States come from the agriculture industry, which covers just about all the food you eat. This is to say that, while changing your diet can cut carbon emissions, if you or if everyone in the country cut their consumption of the highest carbon-producing agricultural product, meat, you still wouldn’t make a dent in the overall carbon emissions of this country.  

What you end up doing by avoiding products like meat is not help lower the emissions of the country, is vilifying farmers, and turning those who would otherwise be among the most important allies in the fight against climate change into enemies. Think about it: increased frequency of drought, increased temperatures, shorter harvest season. Farmers have the most to lose in the climate crisis! They also have the most to gain, since the shift to green energy will require a shift to carbon-neutral fuel alternatives produced by the farmers. Despite this, they don’t want to help because so-called green activists have railed against their products because of this theory that it is their products causing the icecaps to melt. 

This same argument can be applied to the general public. It is not only likely, it is certain, that in the face of such a calamity, people will be willing to change certain behaviors, but by telling someone that they have to fundamentally change their everyday life by shifting their whole diet, you make it much harder to make them support the vitally important cause of fighting climate change. By making a shift in diet the most important or most emphasized part of fighting climate change, most will end up seeing all of the efforts to fight climate change as an overly intrusive series of ridiculous steps.  

This has happened before. In 1980, Ronald Reagan turned human rights and détente into an unpopular issue by connecting the policy to the Carter Administration’s deeply unpopular use of sanctions and tariffs to advance the policy. Reagan connected the policy to something the public saw as overly intrusive and turned the United States into a hawkish, violently anti-communist nation. It is clear that if people continue to harp on diet as the culprit of the climate crisis, they run the risk of turning the real solutions to the problem into political poison. 

Now, it is still absolutely necessary to address the climate crisis, but there are far better ways to go about this. Senator Elizabeth Warren was almost dead right when she said that, “70% of the pollution of the carbon that we’re throwing into the air comes from three industries.” In reality, the numbers are actually much worse than what the Senator claims, almost 80% of carbon emissions come from these industries, those being transportation, electricity and manufacturing.  

It is clear what must be done for each one of these industries. Transportation needs to be regulated to limit emissions from cars and mandate that all cars be electric by 2030. With electricity, just change from fossil fuels to wind, solar and nuclear power. Manufacturing just needs a cap placed on the level of emissions each factory can put out. 

No limits should be put on agriculture, which will be stretched thin trying to feed an overpopulated world. The only piece regarding it in any climate change plan should be on the creation of subsidies for sugar beet ethanol, which will burn virtually carbon neutral, and the promotion of American agriculture around the world through free trade.