2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Andrew Yang is sharing his plan on how he’ll get people to cut down on their meat consumption to combat climate change.
During Thursday’s climate change forum hosted by MSNBC, the 2020 Democrat was asked by an audience member about “what policy adjustments” he’d make to “curb expansion and reduce the environmental impact of the cattle industry” in order to “reduce demand.”
While noting the cattle industry is “energy expensive,” Yang said he’d want cattle producers to “internalize the cost of emissions.”
“Because if your cattle ends up polluting a lot, which they do just naturally — we don’t hate them for it, they’re just animals. […] So then what that would naturally do — and some people are going to hate this — but it’d probably make those products more expensive,” he said. “And that is appropriate because there’s a cost to producing food in that way.”
Yang continued, “And so if you were to make it more expensive, then you would end up changing consumption patterns over time.”
MSNBC’s climate forum is a two-day event held at Georgetown University where students are able to ask presidential candidates about their climate change plans.