I would argue that the benefit to reducing emissions pales in comparison to the harm to Danish diets, industry, culture, health, etc.

Even still, in an ideal world, the Danish government would represent the Danish people. Initiatives that disproportionately harm the Danish people - even if there is a net global benefit - would be off the table.

If I governed both my own nation and a nation of people I hate, I would impose the $100 tax on those I hate in order to subsidise cattle farms for those I wish to prosper.

All European countries support a stalemate war, oil laundering shipped via massively inefficient routes with high dirty ship diesel emissions, military CO2 emissions, private jets traveling to Davos (there is no fuel tax for private jets in Germany!) and a lot more.

But let us take away the milk from poor people.

Now my family has a couple of engineers, and my work has a positive impact in mitigation of climate change.

There are many realities out there. And many ways to fight climate change.

With that said, there is a discussion to be had about what effective and efficient ag policy looks like while being mindful of the above, in a world limited by physical constraints.

It's also going after a bit player in global GHG emissions. Replacing coal for electricity generation and oil wherever possible (land transport) are the big ones and where the vast majority of the attention should go.

You don't solve a problem by going after the hardest aspects of it down at the end of the long tail. You solve it by going after the head, which is carbon-rich fossil fuels.

Agriculture is not a "bit player" in GHG emissions. It's one of the big 5, the others being electricity generation, transportation, heating and industry, each of which contributes >10%. It's also the sector without a clear path to decarbonization. Generation has renewables, transportation has EV's, heating has heat pumps, some industry has transition plans (and some doesn't)

It's probably because humans are carbon based life forms and we need to eat carbon based foods to live

I hope we never successfully decarbonize agriculture

Everything has externalities, just being born and existing has negative externalities, why don't we just confine everyone to their apartment to limit their externalities? Why don't we force people to pay a tax every time they leave their house to internalize their externalities?

This rule is authoritarian, and it is wrong for the government to use its monopoly on violence to do this to farmers.

It's an extra $100 on a cow worth $3k that'll produce 10k+ gallons of milk in its lifetime. A penny per gallon of milk.

It likely means little to them.

I wonder if we could invent some form of farming that doesn't depend on cows? Technology is pretty amazing these days.