Vox's Zack Beauchamp debunks the 'absurd claim that Biden is trying to ban meat' by basically calling for Joe Biden to ban meat

Have you guys heard that Joe Biden wants to ban meat? It’s ridiculous, of course. Joe Biden can’t take our animal flesh away, not even from our cold, dead hands.

That said, though, Joe Biden should really consider banning meat.

Here, let Vox’s Zack Beauchamp do what he gets paid to do and explain it to the rest of us:

The absurd claim that Biden is trying to ban meat reveals a scarier reality: we need to reduce meat consumption to head off catastrophic climate change, but the culture war might make that impossible https://t.co/xp03EKT0mP

— Zack Beauchamp (@zackbeauchamp) April 26, 2021

Beauchamp writes:

Of course, Biden’s climate change plan does not limit meat-eating in any way. A Washington Post fact-check traced the burger-banning Biden myth back to a misleading article in the Daily Mail, a UK tabloid known for sensationalist coverage and right-wing politics. Biden’s actual climate policies so far have focused on reducing emissions from cars and power plants, with no effort to block meat production or consumption.

At first blush, this is yet another instance of a fake outrage cycle in the right-wing echo chamber pegged to a lie. But there’s something more distressing here too — it’s the latest example of how efforts to curb the climate crisis and our reliance on meat are becoming just the latest flashpoints in our all-consuming culture wars.

The grain of truth in the Republican claims (agri-pun intended) is that any serious climate change plan needs to do something about meat production. A recent paper in Science, a leading academic journal, found that food-related emissions alone put the Paris climate agreement’s warming target of 1.5 degrees Celsius out of reach. The most effective way to address these emissions, according to the paper’s authors, is a global shift away from meat consumption.

Biden’s climate policies so far have not advanced this goal, so those conservative potshots over the weekend were lies. But here’s the thing: Biden’s plan absolutely should do something about industrial farming. Any plan to tackle climate change should do something to decrease America’s reliance on the meat industry — moonshot subsidies for lab-grown meat, for example.

In this context "the culture war" is a strange way to refer to why *the strong preferences of huge democratic majorities in every country* is prevailing over *a position one tiny faction wants technocratic elites to coercively impose.* https://t.co/NNMGDaNTSV

— Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64) April 26, 2021

I’m all for addressing climate change but telling people their lives are going to be miserable is why this will never happen. https://t.co/QzhxuopzsC

— Eric Cunningham (@decunningham2) April 26, 2021

Remember Paul Bethany whipping himself in The Da Vinci Code?

That’s what joining the International Holy Church of Climate is at this point. It’s just sad that human beings choose to be like this. https://t.co/YcNPBYKAXp

— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) April 26, 2021

Well, at least not all of us choose to be that way.