The meat industry contributes more to greenhouse gas emissions than the combined exhaust from every form of transportation on Earth – a whopping fifth of the total. Beef is the biggest culprit, and it requires almost 30 times as much land and 11 times as much water to produce as pork or chicken.

Denmark’s Council of Ethics, a government think tank, said that in light of these facts, Danes are ethically obligated to change their eating habits and that a sliding-scale tax should be imposed on foods that is proportional to their “climate impact.”

The proposal now goes before lawmakers. Under the plan, a tax would first be imposed on beef, then would be expanded to all red meat, and possibly further food sources based on the sliding-scale model. Denmark is a small country, and the effect of a tax on climate-change mitigation would be negligible, but the nation’s size allows for “greener living” to be built into people’s lifestyles more easily. More than a third of the residents in Copenhagen, Denmark’s capital, bike to work, and only 29 percent own a car. The government has a comprehensive plan to make the country independent from fossil fuels by 2050.

Americans eat about 200 pounds of meat per capita annually, which is more than double the global average, although overall meat consumption is increasing worldwide.