Here is an interesting article about the ongoing debates about ethical food and climate change: “The Eat-Local Backlash.” Such articles demonstrate how fiendishly complicated it can be to make personal environmental decisions. Questions about which of two options has the lesser environmental effect can rarely be definitively answered, not least because there are so many different types of environmental effects, ranging from air and water pollution to climate change and loss of biodiversity. This article is from a site called Grist, which has recently joined the ranks of those I consult most frequently and read most carefully. Their analysis isn’t always terrific, but the place has a lot of life.
Indeed, the site itself demonstrates the benefits of aggregation (one argument against local food). Rather than having the attention of a few hundred people spread between a few dozen environmental blogs, each getting a couple hundred hits a day, this provides a much more concentrated conversation. I encourage those interested in environmental issues to join and start commenting.
While the Economist’s article about ‘ethical food’ painted the movement with an overly broad brush, it did pretty accurately describe the deluded narcissists who pass for environmentalists in Whistler. Anyone who commutes 60km a day in a one-ton pickup, protests run of the river hydro and buys from farmers markets feels entitled to lecture others about sustainability. A heavy dose of braindead New-Age mysticism helps.