Out of sight, out of mind

Sammanfattning: This paper is about policy agenda and climate policies in Sweden. It examines why the alternative of a meat tax isn’t placing on the Swedish policy agenda. The study uses John W. Kingdon’s theory on agenda change presented in his book Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies, to analyze why a meat tax isn’t seriously considered as a climate policy to reduce GHG-emissions from meat consumption. The paper examines how the issue of emissions and alternative of a meat tax are framed by media, public bureaus, interest groups, academics and political parties. Emissions from meat consumption are beginning to be defined as problematic by more and more actors, but there is still a large unawareness about the effects of meat consumption on climate. There isn’t a political will to introduce a tax on meat in order to reduce emissions and there is a lack of policy entrepreneurs to connect the alternative with climate policies and to initiate a bargaining process in the political stream, for a window of opportunity to open up. The alternative seems to be going through a softening up process, but is unlikely to be realized in the short-run.