Joe Biden is not coming to take your Whopper.

Another day; another right-wing lie designed to disparage and deny climate change. When will it ever end?

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In its increasingly desperate attempt to feed the zombies begat by the 30,573 documented lies unleashed by our former twice-impeached one-term president, the GOP has gone full QAnon again with a claim that the Biden administration plans to reduce meat consumption by 90 percent as part of its climate initiatives.

Think about that for a moment. No Whopper. No Dave’s Double. No drunk Uncle Harry burning charcoal burgers on the smoky grill in the backyard. No hardening of the arteries. The horror. The horror. Stealing an election is one thing, man, but this will not stand.

The fact that Biden has not announced any such requirement, has no plans to do so, and probably never even thought about it has not deterred right-wing “patriots” from tweeting and retweeting the total bullshit Fox News graphic above hundreds of thousands of times. Among those who regurgitated the bait was 2024 GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who had the good sense to get out of the Trump administration early, but not enough courage to fully distance herself. What I find slightly baffling about her retweet is that Nimrata Randhawa Haley is the daughter of first-generation Sikh immigrants from India. Sikhs don’t eat cow. But, of course, she’s since found Jesus so maybe it’s okay.

The whole episode shows how easy it is to manipulate data and create connections that don’t actually exist. In January 2020, researchers at the University of Michigan released a study (based on research that was collected long before Biden was elected) on the “Implications of Future US Diet Scenarios on Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” It found that greenhouse gas emissions could be cut in half if red meat consumption were cut by 90 percent, along with a 50 percent drop in all other meat consumption. It was a normal, boring but useful, university research project with no political agenda and compatible with earlier research.

Late last week, the Daily News, a right-wing English tabloid so batty and unreliable that it’s been permanently banned as a source for Wikipedia, ran a piece ostensibly about the Biden administration’s plans to reduce carbon emissions with additional opinions from expert sources on what it would take to get there. Some enterprising reporter found the heretofore obscure University of Michigan meat consumption study and turned it into a viral internet hit by cleverly and deceptively connecting it to Biden’s climate agenda.

Naturally, Fox News, our own beacon of truth, piled on. Some production assistant whipped up the graphic at the top taking some of the findings from the study and labeling them “Biden’s Climate Requirements.” Of course, John Roberts had to walk it back three days later but by then the damage had already been done.

“On Friday, we told you about a study from the University of Michigan to give some perspective on President Biden’s ambitious climate change goals. That research, from 2020, found that cutting back how much red meat people eat would have a drastic impact on harmful greenhouse gas emissions. The data was accurate but a graphic and the script incorrectly implied that it was part of Biden’s plan for dealing with climate change. That is not the case.”

VERIFY, a fact-checking service mainly for TV stations, actually took the trouble to contact two of the researchers of the Michigan study—Gregory A. Keoleian, the director of the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan, and Research Specialist Martin Heller—who confirmed:

“To our knowledge, there is no connection between our study and Joe Biden's Climate plan. This appears to be an association made erroneously by the Daily Mail that has been picked up widely. Our study merely identifies opportunities for emissions reductions that are possible from changes in our diet. By no means does it suggest that these changes in diet would be required to meet climate goals.”

There are plenty of reasons to think it might not be a bad idea to ease up on the meat a little and not all of them have anything to do with the environment. The average American consumed 224.63 pounds of red meat and poultry in 2020, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which explains a lot about the average crowd at a Trump rally. Eating less meat would certainly reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke, lower the rate of colorectal cancer and diabetes, and, everybody’s favorite, obesity. Personally, I like meat as much as the next red-blooded American but I feel better if I have it only once a week.

The environmental argument for less red meat is compelling too. Producing food and getting it to market is complex and wasteful and requires lots of fossil fuels, tractors, refrigerated trucks, processing plants, packing materials, chemical fertilizer, supermarkets, and countless other messy and unsustainable factors. The livestock emissions part—the methane and carbon dioxide cocktail that AOC used to refer to as “cow farts”—from more than 60 billion land animals alone accounts for nearly 15 percent of global greenhouse gases emitted each year. Add in the other food production and distribution processes and the number is probably higher than all fossil fuels added together.

In a sane world, we would all eat less meat, waste less food, feed more people and find something to do with our time that is more rewarding than making up bullshit to trigger the MAGA crowd for fun and profit. Alas, we’re not living in a sane world.

Speaking of profit, Emily Atkin, who has a substack newsletter called “Heated,” has a great post today called Prepare for the Meat War that makes it clear that Big Meat is putting Big Money into discrediting the industry’s part in the climate crisis.

Dig Deeper

Implications of Future US Diet Scenarios on Greenhouse Gas Emissions (UMichigan)

No, the Biden Administration has not proposed a reduction in red meat consumption by 2030 (VERIFY)

The Planet on the Plate: Why Epicurious Left Beef Behind (Epicurious)

Meat Reduction (UMichigan)

Prepare for Meat War (Heated)

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