locally grown

[kandrathe]

Of course there is an economy of scale, I am not disputing that. But you should make these calculations on a per product basis (and also consider other aspects).

At the bulk that some of these shipments are made, the transportation cost is less than 3% of the cost and so if the price demand varies (due to over supply in one place and under supply in another), then moving the product makes more sense than letting it rot or paying vast sums to store it until the demand in the local area improves.

A ship can use 1/50th of the carbon footprint a truck does, but if a truck needs to travel 200 miles and a ship 10.000 miles things start changing. And to be fair, the produce doesn't grow in the harbour, it grows inland, and depending on how far inland this can have a huge influence.

What doesn't make sense is mining coal from Montana, taking it by train to Duluth, then by ship to Germany, by rail to a power plant, to burn it to make steam to drive a turbine, to make electricity, to power a hot water heater in Frankfurt. But, the same is probably true about grain as well, as long as the wheat crop in the Ukraine doesn't fail.

Futher there are many cases in which there is an easy visible difference. If you live in California, the C-footprint of a californian wine is smaller than that of an french wine.

I don't know what to say about luxury goods. It would be a boring world if all we ever produced were essentials. Then again, we do seem overly concerned about entertainment these days. Do you ever walk down the street in any major city and pass by the sex super store and reflect on the fact that all those products were made in factories in China, and what those people in China who make this stuff must be thinking about a world that consumes it?

And even better is buying a plastic bottle of ethanol and using tap water to make vodka.:D

Or, maybe there are better drugs for compressing the brain stem and shocking the brain into near death rapture, if intoxication is all you are after.

The whole point of the case is that people should use there brain to try and figure out what is best and they need help from organizations that have the correct data.

The part people need to be more sensitive about is their buy into "prestige" or convenience at any cost, such as, fashionable women's hats and the passenger pigeon, or disposable products. I'm not sure what organizations you are talking about, since what we have now are the screaming meamie eco-nazi's claiming everything we do it harmful versus the greedy money grubbing capitalists with front men like Vince from Sham Wow, who are trying to sell you rubber dog poo made in China. China is certainly benefiting from the senseless manufacture of anything for anybody.

Mind you, the biggest difference you can make is going to the shop by bike instead of by a 3 liter engine car.

I don't think so. First, there is a level of suffering in that depending on the distance to the store and the climate. I wouldn't relish a grocery run even 2 miles by bicycle at 20 below F.

I think for example, choosing to squeeze into a smaller home, or live closer to where you work would have a bigger impact. Although, it also is often too big a sacrifice for many (all things considered, such as the quality of school districts, and levels of street crime). The biggest impact is probably not in what you drive (within reason), as long as you commute a short distance. At some point the amount of living space needing to be heated per person can become excessive. There are luxury homes near me that were recently built with over 1000 sq. meters of living space occupied by (executive) two people, although they were also made with walls double thick as well, but their carbon footprint for heating that "castle" is still higher.

The amounts and types of foods eaten by people, and the choices of what particular products they "just had to buy". For example, I get annoyed every time my wife buys those "cup o soup" convenience packs with a Styrofoam cup holding a single serving of dried bullion and rehydrate-able noodles. Its so obvious to me that she just spent a dollar on 50 cents worth of packaging, and 10 cents worth of soup.

I think one aspect that is missing from this debate is how the third world participates in a global economy. If you start making people live local, how does that help to elevate the standard of living of island bound Maori? Or, do we just leave them to go back to primitive?