"The sorry saga began on Thursday, when Biden
pledged at a virtual climate summit that the US will cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% to 52%, compared to 2005 levels, by 2030.
Biden and the
White House briefly outlined a variety of measures that would help, from improving vehicle efficiency to retrofitting buildings to "farmers deploying cutting-edge tools" to make American soil "the next frontier in carbon innovation."
There was nothing in either Biden's summit speeches or in policy papers released by the White House about mandating changes to Americans' diets. But The Daily Mail ran a
headline that said "Biden's climate plan could limit you to eat just one burger a MONTH." The article went on to say that although Biden hasn't yet released the details of his plans, "Americans may have to cut their red meat consumption by a whopping 90 percent and cut their consumption of other animal based foods in half."
Where did The Daily Mail get those numbers? It cited the academic paper we told you about above. But, again, that paper wasn't about Biden and wasn't about mandatory restrictions.
The paper
found that if Americans made a 50% cut to their consumption of animal-based foods and a 90% cut to their consumption of beef in particular -- in other words, if they went down to four pounds of beef per year, or 0.18 oz per day -- there would be a 51% reduction in diet-related US greenhouse gas emissions between 2016 and 2030."
So Biden pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 plus percent by 2030. Americans cutting beef consumption to 4 lbs per year would get us there by 2030. What they said was true. Who they attributed it too was not. Glad they fixed it. CNN can learn how to properly correct mistakes. They make tons of them.