8 Eating Your Way to a Greener PlanetRead more at location 2484
Ed tries not to fly at all, but when he must he purchases a $5.95 carbon offset to reverse the carbon impact of his trip. Since 1990 Ed has hooked up his bicycle exercise machine to a battery, which he uses for toasting bread. He also claims he has reduced his weekly waste to a physical size that would fit inside a glove compartment, mostly by eliminating paper from his life. He has a wind turbine attached to his home and he hosts a TV show on living green, called Living with Ed and shown on Planet Green.Read more at location 2486
Working out of Malaysia, Matthias promotes the idea of green cement. He claims that traditional forms of cement are responsible for 6 to 7 percent of CO2 emissions and for more than 10 percent of the emissions coming out of China.Read more at location 2490
Starting in 2005, Wal-Mart found comprehensive energy savings in their trucking, refrigeration, energy, lighting, and other store operations.Read more at location 2494
All of this was done in the name of corporate profit.Read more at location 2497
Pygmy living in Central Africa.Read more at location 2498
many Pygmies still live as hunters and gatherers. Most Pygmies, at least the ones who have stayed in Pygmy communities, do not own anything beyond what they can carry on their backs.Read more at location 2498
Pygmy life expectancy is somewhere between 16 and 24 yearsRead more at location 2501
Advice on how to “eat green” or “live green” is plentiful, but too often the comments are marred by broader political agendas,Read more at location 2503
or a search for “feel good” answers that aren’t actually effective.Read more at location 2505
bestselling movies on food, such as Super Size Me, Food, Inc., and The Future of Food, they share a common feature: a snarky and somewhat self-righteous approach to the choices that other human beings make in markets, most of all with their food.Read more at location 2505
Choosing Friends and EnemiesRead more at location 2508
Note: sentirsi giusti ed essere giusti chi pacifica la sua coscienza poi è più rapace esp1: chi compra verde poi è più propenso a imbrogliare la cattiva reputazione della pastica... l errore dell afgiliazione... sacchetto di plastica e di carta di stoffa km0: l impatto ambientale del cibo viene al 90% dalla produzione e al 10 dal trasporto gli extra micro viaggi dei km0... km0: la produzione locale può essere forzata... deve essere conservata ridurre carne rossa boicottare la monsanto: quasi impossibile ogm: 1 quantità 2 meno pesticidi 3 + resistenti inconveniente del boicottaggio: 1 abassa i prezzi attirando nupvi consumatori 2 funziona con i deboli che fondano tutto sulla reputazione xchè falliscono i boicottaggi vs monsanto o nestlè? xchè sono compagnie con una cattiva reputazione boicottaggio sulla produzione: meglio produrre in modo efficiente e investire contro la nestlè finanz. i concorrenti boicottaggio al consumo: meglio un extra sforzo produttivo finanz. le alternative. diminuendo i prezzi delle alternative il boicottaggi sarà più efficiente poichè massimizza il benessere coinvolgendi chi valuta meno il prodotto da boicottare Edit
We feel better by constructing alliances with moral individuals or by linking ourselves with apparently moral qualities, but that’s not always the same as being effectiveRead more at location 2511
given a choice, a lot of people prefer to actually be wasteful than to do something that feels wasteful.Read more at location 2514
people hate the feeling of “I could have gotten this for less”Read more at location 2515
tendency to incur costs to avoid a feeling of regret or inadequacy—Read more at location 2516
A consumer psychology study conducted by Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong found that consuming “green products” does not make us better people. If anything, buying green products seems to encourage individuals to be less moral.Read more at location 2517
That is, once they had assuaged their consciences with some green behavior, they became more rapacious and more self-seeking in other contexts.Read more at location 2520
Its manufacture requires petroleum products and it is a symbol of excess consumerismRead more at location 2532
Yet plastic is often more environmentally friendly than paper or cardboard.Read more at location 2533
Glass, for your bottles, consumes a lot of energy in its production and transportation. Plastic just sits there and reminds you of the excesses of modern commercial society.Read more at location 2535
The mistake is to focus too much on the affiliation with the notion of plastic,Read more at location 2537
Under some plausible estimates it takes four times as much energy to manufacture a paper bag than a plastic bag, and it takes 98 percent less energy to recycle a pound of plastic than a pound of paper.Read more at location 2539
Still, plastic seems to have a less harmful environmental impact—much less harmful—than does paper.Read more at location 2541
cotton bag has to be reused 171 times before it “breaks even” with the environmental impact of the plastic.Read more at location 2543
Locavores—those who eat local foods, either mostly or exclusively—are also pursuing a feel-good attitudeRead more at location 2545
The shipping of food is only a small part of its total energy cost,Read more at location 2546
The most comprehensive study comes out of Carnegie Mellon University and was done by Christopher L. Weber and H. Scott Matthews,Read more at location 2549
environmental impact of food comes from its production, not its transportation.Read more at location 2550
The real culprit here is food that is flown in, as flying is an especially environmentally unfriendly activity.Read more at location 2551
In other words, eat turnips rather than asparagus, which is often flown in by plane. Go hardy because the hardy items can be farmed in a lot of different climates and probably they are not flown in. Good root vegetables are kale, carrots, parsnips, and leeks.Read more at location 2552
The Weber and Matthews Carnegie Mellon study, mentioned above, found that shifting your eating away from red meat, one day a week, does more for the environment than eating all locally sourced foods for all of your meals.Read more at location 2558
Buying from a local farmer can mean that he makes a two-hour extra truck drive,Read more at location 2559
The local farmer is also shipping a smaller number of units, and so the per unit energy cost of his supply can be relatively highRead more at location 2560
When it comes to protecting the environment, local isn’t always better and very often it is worse.Read more at location 2562
What would it mean to live in the American Southwest and eat all of your food locally, given that you are surrounded by a large desert?Read more at location 2563
The environment is better off if the residents of Albuquerque import most of their food from far away.Read more at location 2565
Sometimes the local apple is put into refrigerated cold storage for several months, which of course consumes energy. It would be better to buy a fresher apple, sent by boat from further abroad.Read more at location 2567
April Dávila, a youthful writer from southern California, saw the movie Food, Inc. and decided she would boycott the Monsanto Corporation for an entire month;Read more at location 2569
She read an academic paper showing that GMOs cause some toxic effects in rats;Read more at location 2571
“Monsanto count: Breakfast was clean, but my entire lunch is questionable. The avocado and cucumber were organic, but that doesn’t mean not Monsanto, the tortilla and hummus are big question marks. The rice was Lundberg, so I know that’s some Nonsanto [sic] goodness and the chard was organic, but again, not sure of its seed source, so could be Monsanto.”Read more at location 2579
Monsanto products may feed millions of starving people, require fewer herbicides, and may be more robust under conditions of climate change.Read more at location 2583
boycotts usually work best when the boycotted producer isn’t very profitable. Boycotts work least well when the producer is making a lot of moneyRead more at location 2587
Unless the boycott mobilizes most or all of the relevant consumers in the world, which is very hard to do,Read more at location 2588
Imagine that a group of consumers boycotts New Zealand lamb, on the grounds that it costs a lot of energy to ship that lamb around the world. The United States and the Arab world are two of the major export markets for New Zealand lamb. If enough consumers in the United States stop eating this lamb, under some assumptions about the structure of the market, and how the market works, the price of the lamb will fall. And what will then happen to lamb purchases in the Arab world? They will go up.Read more at location 2589
if one group of buyers leaves the market, the seller will either cut price or expand promotion until other buyers pick up the slack.Read more at location 2596
boycotts are most likely to succeed when they are directed against declining companies with good reputations.Read more at location 2599
This analysis—in particular the recommendation to focus a boycott on the more marginally profitable corporations—runs counter to our moral intuitions.Read more at location 2602
If the corporation is truly profitable, it will probably end up selling the product no matter what—boycott or not—unless the entire world joins the boycott, which hardly ever happens.Read more at location 2607
Actually Helping the EnvironmentRead more at location 2623
Note: è molto difficile e costoso sapere quanto inquiniamo ci vogliono 5 lauree mangi una banana e vuoi sapere se il tuo gesto è sostenibile? occorre conoscere10000 fatti e serve metterli insieme... qs conoscenza è obsoleta dopo un anno etichette? sono costose e vengono poco considerate meglio afgidarsi ai prezzi i prezzi riducono la complessità e noi ci fidiamo 2 alternative: memorizzare i fatti o scegliere in base al prezzo carbon tax ha senso se applicata da tutti ma meglio che niente... imho stockpile il punto debole di c.t.? 1 a un certo punto il governo dovrà fisare l entità della tasa e dei beneficiari. incapacità e ignoranza prevarranno 2 ct in un paese abbassa i prezzi aumentando la domanda altrove il mondo invecchia e le tasse cresceranno... meglio puntare su c.t. diminuendo la corporate tax altre oplitiche: tariffe parcheggi rilassare i piani regolatori (+ densità - auto) meno sussidi all agricoltura Edit
REPORTER: Do you feel bad about your carbon footprint? BRÛLÉ: On balance, I don’t think my carbon footprint is particularly large. I do fly an enormous amount, but I don’t own a car, I walk most places in London and opt for trains over aircraft where possible (in Europe and Japan).Read more at location 2627
It’s hard for consumers to “see” the real environmental costs of a lot of their decisions. Memorizing facts about bunches of bananas, boats, and boycotts will not do it.Read more at location 2634
Most people, even well-informed people, don’t have a good sense of how much an afternoon drive in a Mercedes contributes to the climate change problem, relative to buying a batch of flown-in asparagus or subbing in a steak for a chicken breast.Read more at location 2637
You might think that carbon labeling of products is the way to go,Read more at location 2638
The more fundamental problem is that labels do not encompass the same economy-wide information that is communicated by the priceRead more at location 2640
foodstuff grown close to the city might receive a favorable label, because of its low transport costs. But putting the food close to the city pushes commuters further out and the net effect will not be so good for the environment.Read more at location 2641
I never try to figure out the cheapest way for someone to make a suit for me, rather I compare the price of the good with its final qualityRead more at location 2648
Prices are important, in large part, because most of us cannot see very far behind the priceRead more at location 2656
In this context, relying on prices means taxing fossil fuels and it also means higher taxes on meat, which through methane emissions (e.g., cow farts) contribute to climate change problems.Read more at location 2667
Once the tax is in place, consumers don’t have to care very much about the environment or at all.Read more at location 2672
The tax does involve an informational burden on the government,Read more at location 2673
That is a problem, because governments don’t always get those decisions right.Read more at location 2675
Ideally a carbon tax should be done in conjunction with other major polluters, most of all China, the world’s number one carbon polluter at the moment.Read more at location 2678
In any politically feasible scenario, we will need some spending cuts and some tax increases,Read more at location 2683
what should we tax? It’s pretty simple: We should tax those items with some negative consequences for the environment.Read more at location 2685
If we wish, we could offset a higher carbon tax with a lower corporate incomeRead more at location 2688
The people who are preaching fiscal austerity—and mean it—are some of the best friends of the environment, whether they know it or not. They are the ones paving the way for a carbon tax.Read more at location 2698
Greater efforts to support green forests abroad and other carbon sinks.Read more at location 2725
Cut back on requirements for minimum parking to accompany suburban developments; minimum parking requirements encourage car use and sprawl.Read more at location 2726
Ease zoning restrictions on high-density construction in urban areas. City dwellers are less likely to have cars or to travel long distances and thus they are “greener.”Read more at location 2727
Eliminate all subsidies to large agribusiness.Read more at location 2729
Phase out water subsidies, which encourage inefficient agricultureRead more at location 2731
2. Cultivate expensive tastes for environmentally dangerous itemsRead more at location 2742
When many foods rot on compost heaps, they give off methane gasRead more at location 2777
