If you want to turn climate policy into a bitter culture war, there are few more effective weapons than a Big Mac.

On one side, environmentalists will point out that the cattle we raise cause about as much greenhouse pollution as all the world¡¯s cars, trucks, ships and planes. On the other, irritated meat-lovers will call you a killjoy and warn that you don¡¯t win friends with salad. There¡¯s one place where the opposing groups agree, however: As incomes rise and allow people to buy more of it, beef-eating is such an irresistible habit that only implausibly radical behavioral changes can stop things spiraling still further out of control.

They¡¯re both wrong about that, though. As we¡¯ve argued in the past, the world is rapidly closing in on peak beef. It¡¯s possible that the carbon hoofprint of the global cattle herd is already in decline.

That¡¯s certainly the assessment suggested by the U.S. Department of Agriculture¡¯s data. More than 90% of the world¡¯s additional demand for meat over the past 15 years has been met by less carbon-intensive products. Consumption of chicken increased by 35%, or 27 million metric tons, between 2010 and the agency¡¯s forecast for 2025 demand, while pork is up by 12 million tons, or 12%. Beef, whose heavy methane load is due to burped gases from ruminant stomachs that poultry and pigs lack, increased by a mere 3.6 million tons, or 6.3%.

Such numbers are particularly striking when you consider that the world¡¯s population increased by about 15% between 2010 and 2023, and the global economy is about 43% larger, adjusted for inflation. Our appetite for burgers, steak and mince hasn¡¯t increased at anything like the same rate. This suggests the constraint on beef production is not our guts and wallets, but more fundamental constraints of resource availability.

The same factor that worries environmentalists about beef ¡ª its voracious ability to consume land, water, feed crops and the planet¡¯s carbon budget ¡ª puts limits on the ability for supplies to grow. Diners might not need to self-consciously reject red meat at all, when the availability of cheaper fish, chicken, pork and vegetarian options is enough to cause an imperceptible shift away from it.

By the USDA¡¯s numbers, those factors may already by causing a decline in the worldwide herd. From a peak of more than a billion head of cattle in the mid-2000s, stocks at the start of next year will fall to 923 million head, a record low in their data.

That may seem inconsistent with a world in which beef demand is still growing, but in fact it¡¯s not. In crowded developed countries, animals spend much of their lives in intensive...