this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
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Source: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Generivory

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I'm actually surprised no weird economist is pushing this somewhere.

Bonus panel

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I've seen this argument pushed unironically, and quite convincingly.

It of course depends on a lot of factors, and GHG emissions are not the only concern, but "short-circuit" consumption can (apparently, I did not run the numbers myself and read this a few years ago) emit much more CO2 than importing food from far away... simply because driving a car for 10 km to a farm for a bag of apples (or whatever) is a LOT worse per apple than the traditional container-on-ship->container-on-rail->semi-truck->local store supply chain which has a few times the fuel consumption of a car... but multiple orders of magnitude more cargo.
This is in reality not so much a dig on short-circuit consumption, which is obviously overall good, than a dig at how polluting cars are, even compared to cargo ships whose emissions we intuitively over-estimate. Still, it has stuck with me as a good example of the complexity of making a life-cycle emissions assessment.

Modern globalized economies are also often criticized to have gone too far into economies of scale, making them very brittle... as we saw in 2020/2021, as farmers re-discover every time one illness destroys an entire country's mono-culture, and as we fear we may discover soon with TSMC.
Furthermore almost every country (even very economically liberal ones like the US) heavily subsidizes their local agricultural sector to shield them from foreign competition, as it is of the utmost national security importance that a blockade on agricultural imports could not result in widespread famine.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

simply because driving a car for 10 km to a farm for a bag of apples (or whatever) is a LOT worse per apple than the traditional container-on-ship->container-on-rail->semi-truck->local store supply chain which has a few times the fuel consumption of a car

Uh. Do you think those semi trucks are bringing apples right into people's homes? Guess how far the grocery store is from people's houses lmao

That argument only works if every citizen in the country lives in high density, transit enabled city cores.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago

IIRC the hypothetical scenario assumed you had a supermarket on your side of town (say 1 km) but had to to on the other side of town to get to a local farm (say 10-15 km). As a suburbanite this seems quite reasonable to me on both fronts.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Or in a small walkable town. They exist. You don't need a 100,000 people city to have easy access to apples.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago

Increased productivity could do those things, but instead it just increases the wealth of the wealthy, and the suffering of everyone else.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You're forgetting the straw man that speaks for things that can't speak for themselves, then also equates them to humans

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Does a straw man that only speaks for things that don't speak for themselves speak for themself?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

More importantly, is this a generic straw man or an artisinal straw man?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Ah, a Russell's Paradox joke. This is the kind of quality content I come to Lemmy for ⭐

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Who sees the benefit of that increased productivity, Mark?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

Cartoonists!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Anything anything, just don't make -me- deal with the rich.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Regarding the "spoiler bonus panel":

In what fucking universe do Twinkies come in a "sack"?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I think they're saying he's brought so many they would necessitate using a sack to convey them.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

You ever see It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia when Mac has a garbage bag full of chimichangas? I'm just imagining that he got a whole pallet of Twinkies and put them in a garbage bag.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

Damn Americans and their...(squints)...canned food.