(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) In an effort to further its control of the populace and allegedly to help fight climate change, Germany’s Green Party and Social Democrats have proposed skyrocketing the country’s value added tax on meat to 19%, up from the current 7% charged on most foods.
The proposal, however, is running into resistance from conservatives who think it’s an overreach of government and environmental extremists who said it doesn’t go far enough to satisfy their demands.
Chancellor Angela Merkel‘s Christian Democrats reportedly supports the plan, but wants any additional revenue raised by the tax hike purposed to help livestock farmers “restructure” their operations, according to state-owned Deutsche Welle broadcasting.
“Such a tax can be a constructive proposal,” said Merkel spokesman Albert Stegemann.
But even with food prices already soaring in Germany, along with gas and energy costs, radical environmentalists from the Green Party are pushing for an even steeper levy than the proposed 19%.
“We should eat less meat overall and make sure it comes from animals that are kept in a species-appropriate manner,” said Federal Minister of Food and Agriculture Cem Özdemir, reported Your News.
The Green Party climate alarmist wants to convert livestock farmers to primarily support fertilization for production of plant-based foods. Germany should be “adapting meat consumption to planetary boundaries and for the sake of our health,” he declared.
That falls in line with the Green Party leader’s refusal to back the VAT hike for meat because it falls short of what climate wokesters demand. Robert Habeck said he wanted “a full overhaul of the VAT system to tackle environmental concerns,” reported Deutsche Welle.
Leftists and climate change zealots in the United States have long had their eyes on destroying livestock farmers and pricing meat off menus for all but global elitists.
“If it gains traction, it could help rid the world of a lot of unnecessary suffering,” opined the far-Left Vox in championing Germany’s tax hike on meat.
The U.S. should follow by inflicting maximum pain on consumers of meat, Vox reflected of previous declarations that such people are cretins “treading on the environment for others.”
“Eating that way wouldn’t be illegal, but people who choose to do it would have to pay for the imposition of their choices on others.”
In that same vein, climate change alarmists have latched onto the Germany model and are pushing for it to be implemented in other “rich” countries, specifically America, backing their arguments with studies from groups that have the same goal of effectively eliminating meat consumption.
“Livestock farming is a huge contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, soil and water pollution,” said the chairman of a coalition of Berlin “environmental economists,” according to ReMix.
“Evidence suggests the environmental impacts are so large that the world can’t meet climate goals and keep vital ecosystems intact without reducing the consumption of meat – at least in Western high-income countries,” said professor Linus Mattauch.
The solution would be to increase the price of meat to a prohibitive degree, inflating the cost of beef upwards of 60%, along with a 25% cost hike on poultry and 19% for pork and lamb, Mattauch said.
Another study, this one from Bonn University, also argued that rich, selfish Americans must dramatically reduce their meat consumption by at least 75%.
The study found that “the meat industry is a leading driver of deforestation, contributes 14.5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and wastes significant amounts of resources,” reported Plant Based News. Poor countries aren’t the problem, the researchers claimed, blaming rich ones like the U.S. and U.K., which need to “take more responsibility.”
“If all humans consumed as much meat as Europeans or North Americans, we would certainly miss the international climate targets and many ecosystems would collapse,” said Dr. Matin Qaim, the study’s lead author.
