Denmark, known for its inventive restaurants and elegant design studios, is about to become known for something more basic: the world’s first belch and manure tax.
That’s because there are five times as many pigs and cows in Denmark as there are people. Nearly two-thirds of its land is taken up by farming. And agriculture is becoming its largest share of climate pollution, putting lawmakers under intense public pressure to reduce it.
So now, Denmark’s unlikely coalition government, made up of three parties from across the political spectrum, has agreed to tax the planet-heating methane emissions that all those animals expel through their poop, farts and burps. The measure, under negotiation for years, was passed by the Danish Parliament this month, making it the only such climate levy on livestock in the world.
“I think it’s good,” said Rasmus Angelsnes, 31, who was shopping for dinner in Copenhagen one recent afternoon. “It’s kind of a nudge to make different choices, maybe more climate-friendly choices.”
Never mind that his shopping cart contained thick slices of pork belly, which he planned to cook that rainy evening with potatoes and parsley. “Comfort food,” he said sheepishly.
The tax is part of a larger package designed to clean up the country’s agricultural pollution and eventually restore some farmland to its natural form, like peat lands, which are exceptionally good at locking away planet-heating gases underground but were drained decades ago to grow crops.
Denmark’s quest is also part of a reckoning for many agricultural powerhouses, including the United States, as they face calls to clean up pollution from farms, while balancing the needs of politically powerful agricultural lobbies.
Globally, the food system accounts for a fourth of greenhouses gases, and reducing those emissions requires making tough choices on diets, jobs and industries. At the same time, farmers are vulnerable to the hazards of climate change, with punishing heat, droughts and floods exacerbated by the burning of fossil fuels. That makes food a particularly vexing climate problem to take on.
No wonder that efforts to reduce agriculture’s climate emissions have faced stiff resistance, from Brussels to Delhi to Wellington, where the New Zealand government proposed a burp tax in 2022 only to have a later government scrap it.
Hellbound and Down 