Your estimate for the relative reduction in animal-years is 11.7 % (= 0.009/â0.077) of your estimate for the relative reduction in CO2eq. I estimate the harms caused to farmed animals by a random person in 2022 were 217 times as large as the harms they caused to humans because of their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This suggests the benefits of your modelled carbon tax to farmed animals would be 25.4 (= 0.117*217) times as large as the benefits to humans.
I assumed that there is no abatement in the supply chains. A carbon tax incentivizes producers to produce animal products in a more climate-friendly way. This could increase animal suffering on the intensive margin (e.g. intensification), and reduce the tax on the product. If, for example, beef producers switch to more environmentally-friendly practices, the tax on beef becomes lower and substitution effects decrease.
Poorer welfare standards tend to have a lower carbon footprint, and you estimated a reduction of only 0.9 % in animal-years, which is quite small in light of the above and all other uncertainties. So, since I think the effects on farmed animals dominate, I think it is unclear to me whether a carbon tax would be beneficial or harmful overall. In contrast, I would say taxing the negative effects on farmed animals based on the time they spend in pain, as assessed by the Welfare Footprint Project (WFP), is robustly beneficial.
Youâre right to point out the trade-off between low-carbon production and high welfare standards! Theoretically, it should be possible to adapt the model to weigh the animal welfare impacts on the extensive margin (=number of animals) by the intensity of the suffering of different animals, and to make intensity of suffering in turn a function of the carbon tax. That makes the whole model a bit more wonky but I think itâs important work that needs to be done.
I would say taxing the negative effects on farmed animals based on the time they spend in pain, as assessed by the Welfare Footprint Project (WFP), is robustly beneficial.
I agree! I think it will be quite difficult to implement this, though. Will policymakers like to implement a tax based on âsuffering unitsâ with quite some uncertainty? I wonder if we can find a decent proxy that is easier for taxation.
Will policymakers like to implement a tax based on âsuffering unitsâ with quite some uncertainty? I wonder if we can find a decent proxy that is easier for taxation.
I think it is worth trying. Higher welfare animals tend to grow slower and reach smaller slaughter weights, so taxing animal-years and animals slaughtered will tend to desincentivise welfare reforms, and, if there is a carbon tax, doubly so because they tendentially imply greater GHG emissions.
I agree the suffering of farmed animals is more uncertain than GHG emissions, but I think it may well be less uncertain than the suffering of humans caused by GHG emissions, which I would say is a more relevant comparison. Bressler 2021 estimates âthe 2020 MCC [mortality cost of carbon] is 2.26 Ă 10âťâ´ [low to high estimate â1.71Ă10âťâ´ to 6.78 Ă 10âťâ´] excess deaths per metric ton of 2020 emissionsâ. So there is significant uncertainty with respect to whether GHG increase or decrease human mortality. For comparison, below are the time hens and broilers spend in pain as estimated by WFP. I think the bars are supposed to be the 95 % confidence intervals, although I did not find information about this in the page.
The uncertainty respecting the suffering of animals is much larger than suggested by the above due to uncertainty in welfare ranges and pain intensities. Yet, one can at least be pretty sure eating animals causes them pain, and this happens very soon after consumption. In contrast, Bressler 2021 estimates roughly no impacts until 2055.
I still think you have a point because people may overestimate the uncertainty of the impacts on animals, and underestimate that of the impacts on humans. In addition, people may care about other types of uncertainty beyond uncertainty about the direction of the effect, which is the one I think is lower for animal suffering.
Great post, Soem! I strongly upvoted it.
Your estimate for the relative reduction in animal-years is 11.7 % (= 0.009/â0.077) of your estimate for the relative reduction in CO2eq. I estimate the harms caused to farmed animals by a random person in 2022 were 217 times as large as the harms they caused to humans because of their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This suggests the benefits of your modelled carbon tax to farmed animals would be 25.4 (= 0.117*217) times as large as the benefits to humans.
Poorer welfare standards tend to have a lower carbon footprint, and you estimated a reduction of only 0.9 % in animal-years, which is quite small in light of the above and all other uncertainties. So, since I think the effects on farmed animals dominate, I think it is unclear to me whether a carbon tax would be beneficial or harmful overall. In contrast, I would say taxing the negative effects on farmed animals based on the time they spend in pain, as assessed by the Welfare Footprint Project (WFP), is robustly beneficial.
Youâre right to point out the trade-off between low-carbon production and high welfare standards! Theoretically, it should be possible to adapt the model to weigh the animal welfare impacts on the extensive margin (=number of animals) by the intensity of the suffering of different animals, and to make intensity of suffering in turn a function of the carbon tax. That makes the whole model a bit more wonky but I think itâs important work that needs to be done.
I agree! I think it will be quite difficult to implement this, though. Will policymakers like to implement a tax based on âsuffering unitsâ with quite some uncertainty? I wonder if we can find a decent proxy that is easier for taxation.
I think it is worth trying. Higher welfare animals tend to grow slower and reach smaller slaughter weights, so taxing animal-years and animals slaughtered will tend to desincentivise welfare reforms, and, if there is a carbon tax, doubly so because they tendentially imply greater GHG emissions.
I agree the suffering of farmed animals is more uncertain than GHG emissions, but I think it may well be less uncertain than the suffering of humans caused by GHG emissions, which I would say is a more relevant comparison. Bressler 2021 estimates âthe 2020 MCC [mortality cost of carbon] is 2.26 Ă 10âťâ´ [low to high estimate â1.71Ă10âťâ´ to 6.78 Ă 10âťâ´] excess deaths per metric ton of 2020 emissionsâ. So there is significant uncertainty with respect to whether GHG increase or decrease human mortality. For comparison, below are the time hens and broilers spend in pain as estimated by WFP. I think the bars are supposed to be the 95 % confidence intervals, although I did not find information about this in the page.
The uncertainty respecting the suffering of animals is much larger than suggested by the above due to uncertainty in welfare ranges and pain intensities. Yet, one can at least be pretty sure eating animals causes them pain, and this happens very soon after consumption. In contrast, Bressler 2021 estimates roughly no impacts until 2055.
I still think you have a point because people may overestimate the uncertainty of the impacts on animals, and underestimate that of the impacts on humans. In addition, people may care about other types of uncertainty beyond uncertainty about the direction of the effect, which is the one I think is lower for animal suffering.