Proposition summary

Proposition summary In summary of our debate let us first point out that opposition conceded our point that excessive meat consumption is a danger to the planet. Therefore we can conclude that some action should be taken to alleviate this issue. Therefore we proposed an EU wide tax on meat products, which, coincidentally, is also what the motion called for. The opposition offered two main areas of contention: 1. That the tax itself would be inefficient, discriminatory and hard to implement and therefore should be scrapped 2. That the alternatives proposed by them (originating from the much referenced UN report) lead to a better outcome and should be implemented instead. In this summary well show how they’ve failed on both accounts and therefore our case still stands. 1. Issues with the tax itself Firstly we would like to say that despite the excessive nitpicking on the opposition’s part (and this format does lend itself to picking a ton of nits) we believe that they haven’t managed to rebut our contention that this tax would be feasible to implement and would all in all bring more good than harm. In our substantive case we pointed out two examples where the EU has implemented similar measures despite there also being similar general issues: those were an EU wide mandated minimum gasoline excise tax and a ban on incandescent light bulbs. The main philosophy behind both those actions is the same: we find that excessive consumption of a particular product is harmful to the environment and therefore needs to be regulated on an EU wide basis. We believe the opposition have not pointed out why this also wouldn’t apply to a tax on meat. Let us now address their issues one by one. - the tax wouldn’t reduce consumption We pointed to evidence that showed a correlation between higher price and less consumption. We also pointed out that the demand for meat is less elastic than demand for alcohol, or in other words meat can be fairly easily replaced with other produce (as opposed to alcohol). Therefore we believe that our point stands and the consumption of meat would fall, which, as we both agreed, would be a good thing for the planet. - Consumers would switch to lower quality or less environmentally conscious products The evidence in the previous point shows that while some of this might happen there still remains an overall effect of people consuming less of the product that increases in price. We also showed that the subsidies and incentives for consuming for environmentally conscious faming would remain and therefore it shouldn’t experience a difference in demand. - An indirect tax would be bad for poorer people Surely this is a problem with all indirect taxes(VAT, excise duties), which isn’t a reason for not having any indirect taxes at all. We want to incentivize people to come off meat so, yes, there needs to be an economic impact on them because of the tax. If we alleviated the tax burden on poorer people the tax wouldn’t have that much effect. - The EU shouldn’t tax and subsidize the same thing simultaneously There are a ton of cases where this already happens, most notably gasoline production or VAT. - The EU can’t get anything done and people will start hating it According to this logic the EU couldn’t do anything and there would be no point to this debate. We pointed out two examples in the same field – light bulbs and gas tax – where the EU has managed to get things done. In summary we showed that an EU wide tax would reduce meat consumption and raise revenue for counteracting the damage done to the environment. All in all the tax would do more good than harm and therefore should be implemented. The alternative is better The opposition contends that the alternative, as outline by the UN would lead to more efficient results Firstly we believe that the solution provided by the opposition isn’t mutually exclusive to our solution. We said from the very beginning that our plan does not exclude the possibility of other actions, nor will it solve the problem outright. Therefore we think it’s pointless to compare the two plans, but rather actions should be taken to implement them both. The solution offered by the opposition – regulating inputs, subsidies and polluters all deal with the supply side of meat consumption. This is all well and good, but we believe a robust solution dealing with the demand side of the equation is also needed and therefore have proposed a tax. If we look at for example the field of fossile fuels we also see that we have solutions regulating both the supply and demand sides of the equation. Let us also point out a contradiction in the oppositions case. On the one hand they want to eliminate subsidies going to meat producers, but on the other hand they support the CAP, because it encourages environmentally sound practices. But the CAP is precicely the kind of subsidy the UN is talking about eliminating.