Climate Change - The Languish 'Community' Responses?

[Jacob]

You're still missing the point.
It doesn't matter if transport is 5 or 90% of the emissions. If there is an opportunity to cut these emissions we should take it.
The same goes for production too of course but the two aren't necessary related or mutually exclusionary.

Yes, you are quite correct and I believe I addressed it in a post above. But the almost singular focus on transport that many have is a problem. Sure, we can do solar driven transport and halve the emissions from transport or whatever, that will decrease total emissions by 2.5%. It's almost unimportant compared to almost most other efforts that could be made.

Transport emissions is not the big problem, production emissions are 13 times higher when it comes to food. The focus of environmentalists should be on that part if they want to make a huge difference. Thus mongers asked the wrong question, since production is at least 13 times more important than transport.

And when it comes to mutually exclusionary I beg to differ. Lots of dimwits go about buying locally and talking about how it must be better since there's less transport. It's a very convenient way of making them feel good whilst in real terms it's probably many times worse for the environment compared to industrial large scale products from a  better location. That way they don't have to address the real problems.

That's a really good point, and something I didn't really realize until now.

The next question is the degree to which carbon footprint varies with physical location. It could very well be true that more economically efficient production is also more efficient in terms of C02, but I'd prefer to see the data on that. It could well be, for example, economically efficient production relies on more mechanization (burning fuel) and intensive fertilization (which also is fairly C02 intensive, I believe). That, of course, is potentially be mitigated by scale, but I'd be interested in seeing an accounting.

[Sheilbh]

This might be helpful:
https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local

It's really counter-intuitive because shipping food from Kenya, say, seems so obviously bad from a carbon perspective but there are so many other factors that focus on food miles is probably not actually that helpful.

Edit: And, incidentally it's one of the reasons I'm dubious about the "personal" responsibility/response to climate rather than collective action through governments and regulations.

[mongers]

This might be helpful:
https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local

It's really counter-intuitive because shipping food from Kenya, say, seems so obviously bad from a carbon perspective but there are so many other factors that focus on food miles is probably not actually that helpful.

Edit: And, incidentally it's one of the reasons I'm dubious about the "personal" responsibility/response to climate rather than collective action through governments and regulations.

It's not an either/or choice, it can be both.

[Sheilbh]

But because of the complexity of the systems of production and distribution we're talking about, I think it's relatively possible that individual choices are actually counter-productive in terms of reducing their carbon footprint.

Plus I always go back to the fact that "carbon footprint" was a marketing concept invented by BP to focus on our individual sins rather than social change of individuals working together through states or protest movements and pressure companies like, say, BP.

[Threviel]

The thing to do when it comes to environmental impact is to go borderline vegan. Animal proteins needs to go way way way down and vegetabilic food needs to be produced more efficiently with a smaller environmental footprint per produced calorie. We are on the road to ten billion earthlings and to feed all of us this needs to be done. On the other side of the population hump our childrens childrens children can go back to carnivoring.

So the answer is more efficient large scale industrial production using science to the max to lessen the environmental impact, the more or less exact opposite of organic small scale locally produced food.

[Jacob]

You're probably right, but I'm pretty sure that the tomatoes I grow in my backyard - or the chickens if I ever get some - are going to be really low in terms of carbon impact.

... not that it'll make up for flying to different places if I ever take up travelling again, of course.

[Jacob]

... this kind of touches on a topic I've been mulling over, on importance of "virtue signalling."

I know, of course, that the term currently is weaponized as "useless symbolic activity to make you feel good about yourself" to dismiss all kinds of things  - including things that are neither useless, purely symbolic, nor undertaken to make someone feel good about themselves. But I'm actually talking about the things we can potentially agree on being just that, essentially ineffective and done for how it makes your feel. At this point I'm pretty convinced that such actions can serve an important and useful function.

It's right there in the phrase, actually. Those actions have a signalling function. If enough people signal that they care about whatever virtue it is they're signalling, that makes actual effective political action more achievable. The argument "so many of us have made these inconvenient changes in our lives to improve [issue], let's keep going and support [actual effective political action that may be inconvenient to an influential industry]" is reasonably persuasive I think. It makes things more personal.

Secondly, effective action is sometimes preceded by ineffectual action. Take organic milk, for example. Maybe it's basically pointless... the milk may be no better than regular milk, the cows no happier, the carbon footprint no better, and so on. But the market demand has created some infrastructure and economic incentives that can then potentially be tweaked at lower risk to move towards actual positive outcomes - maybe there's away to tighten standards around the labelling that actually makes for better quality milk/ happier cows/ lower carbon, and if so it's just a matter of doing that rather than building production, distribution, and marketing infrastructure from scratch.

Thirdly, if people really are getting a little hit of satisfaction from signalling their virtue doing ineffective stuff, they'll likely be very amenable to shift towards doing effective things at such a time as effective actions are available. You have to keep chasing that hit of self-satisfaction, and it's only going to be higher if you know it's actually really effective (especially compared to those idiots who'e doing the ineffective stuff, lol).

So yeah... don't be overly harsh on "virtue signalling" if it's well intentioned. You may be undermining vectors of actual effective, positive change.

[Jacob]

As an aside, Threviel, around here "buying local" is more about supporting smaller and local operators, about the supposed flavours of the local terroir, and about feeling a connection to the local land and community. I don't think I've come across anyone articulating "lower carbon foot-print" as a significant motivation or point of marketing.

[Admiral Yi]

I think virtue signaling is only a problem when you either try to draw attention to what a great person you are, or nag other people about it.

[Threviel]

As an aside, Threviel, around here "buying local" is more about supporting smaller and local operators, about the supposed flavours of the local terroir, and about feeling a connection to the local land and community. I don't think I've come across anyone articulating "lower carbon foot-print" as a significant motivation or point of marketing.

Around here lowered transports are given as a reason, in addition to what you write. What you describe is a luxury that we westerners can afford and what I wrote above won't probably be true for us. We can afford to waste and be inefficient, less so the rest of the world.

And your, or mine for that matter, tomatoes from the greenhouse is neither here nor there, we (probably) don't waste energy heating them.

[Josquius]

A while ago I recall reading an article by the person who first coined the term virtue signalling.
Its original meaning is in corporations trying to advertise how good and friendly to the environment and workers they are whilst not actually doing anything positive in these directions.
Which I thought a much more sensible definition.

Though on environmental matters far more than virtue signaling it's ugly cousin vice signalling is an issue. The paint drinkers are increasingly turning outright anti environment. Look to coal rolling et al.
Interestingly the ven is heavy between vice signallers and those who chuck around virtue signalling as a casual insult for anyone who isn't an arse hole.

[Admiral Yi]

What's a ven?

[garbon]

Must be Venn diagram.

[Jacob]

Around here lowered transports are given as a reason, in addition to what you write.

That's potentially silly, yes. Transport matters, but as you've shown production matters significantly more. Growing hothouse tomatoes in Northern Europe does seem pretty inefficient (though I suppose it might be alright if there's cheap geothermal energy available f. ex.). But if the C02 impact between local and imported production is close to even, then transport does matter.

... and I don't think you can safely generalize from Northern Sweden to the entire Western world. The C02 impact of any given local production compared to imported stuff is going to vary significantly based on the methods used and local conditions. It may be completely silly in your location (though I imagine foraged mushrooms, local fish, and local game is still going to be relatively competitive), but it may not be so elsewhere.

What you describe is a luxury that we westerners can afford and what I wrote above won't probably be true for us. We can afford to waste and be inefficient, less so the rest of the world.

I don't think that only rich Westerners can afford to buy local produce. In fact, I'm pretty sure that buying vegetables at the local farmer's market is a pretty widespread practice across many places in the world. Selling excess produce from your local farm to generate a bit of extra revenue is pretty common.

On another note: economic efficiency != C02 efficiency, and the two shouldn't be conflated. If some sort of behaviour reduces C02 emissions, but is an expensive luxury only accessible to some you are correct in your implication that it is not a blanket solution. But it doesn't follow that it shouldn't be done. And, in fact, shifting behaviour patterns to ones where people are willing to pay more money and take more time to lower C02 impact can very well be part of the solution. F. ex. if more people are willing to pay a premium (in time and money) to cross the Atlantic on passenger ships (excluding massive private yachts) rather than planes that'll have a positive impact on C02 emissions in spite of being economically inefficient.

Though of course the ideal actions are ones that are economically more efficient, lower C02 impact, and are more convenient for people. But sometimes you have to iterate through less than ideal stages to get there.

And your, or mine for that matter, tomatoes from the greenhouse is neither here nor there, we (probably) don't waste energy heating them.

It is IMO in fact very here. If the "buying local" thing gets refined to focus on low C02 impact products (say locally hunted game vs imported Australian beef, as opposed to heated hothouse tomatoes) then it potentially has a positive impact (marginal individually, of course, but potentially significant at scale).

Also, I don't need a hothouse to grow tomatoes 

[Threviel]

I don't really get your point. Sure, we can grow tomatoes and tobacco here and sell on the market. Even figs and peaches (Skåne and Halland where I live is amongst the finest agricultural lands in the world, at least according to the local farmers) and all manner of exotic plants and animals. I can go int town and buy lots of different locally produced produce.

It's very inefficient though, we ought to focus on the products that give the most per surface unit and then import higher quality exotic products from where they grow most efficiently. If that means that you can buy locally produced peaches it probably also means that you ought to eat imported potatoes.

But when it comes to vegetables its more or less meaningless to haggle about that, we can probably produce enough vegetables to feed the world even if we do it inefficiently. Meat on the other hand. Beef for example is ten times worse for the environment than a similar plant based product. Mutton eight, pigs I don't remember, but less. Chicken two times worse. We're soon out of fish and IIRC it's surprisingly CO2 intensive