Ezra Klein: Well now I don't know what to do

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August 05, 2007

Well now I don't know what to do

(Posted by John.)

Walking to the store might be worse for the planet than driving?

Although this one seems obvious to me:

The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.

Well, yeah. When we all die from lethargy-induced diabetes or heart failure, the sheer fact of fewer humans would benefit the planet rather nicely, I suppose. Maybe that explains America's high obesity rates: a secret plan to combat global warming!

More seriously, the point of the article is how awful our food-production system in the west really is: food is so energy-intense (read: petroleum-intense) that you're better off putting the gas straight in to your gas tank for basic mobility.

August 5, 2007 | Permalink

Comments

Walking to the store might be worse for the planet than driving?

Only if all you eat is meat, apparently. Go vegetarian and you're still in the planet's good graces.

Posted by: Antid Oto | Aug 5, 2007 11:39:40 AM

To say that meat production is destroying the planet is hardly an exaggeration. Here's the lowdown from the FAO:
http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/index.html

Posted by: mijnheer | Aug 5, 2007 11:53:38 AM

Posted by: Antid Oto | Aug 5, 2007 11:39:40 AM

Only if all you eat is meat, apparently. ...

... and underline that, if all you eat is meat ... the study had a 4:1 ratio for meat calories per mile to gasoline per mile, so if you are eating further down on the food chain for your calories, then you are on the positive side in terms of CO2 ... and if you ride a bike and get your calories from further down the food chain, you're laughing.

Of course, couch potatoes eat no less than people that walk, say, a half an hour a day ... indeed, there will be a threshold level of obesity where they eat more. And, of course, people living in walkable neighborhoods travel fewer miles in a year. But, except for zoning, implicit subsidies for sprawl, explicit subsidies for sprawl, and tax incentives to expand the scale of development projects, there's not much we could do about making neighborhoods more walkable.

Posted by: BruceMcF | Aug 5, 2007 12:05:26 PM

High school policy debate is full of arguments like this.

Remind me to show you how ending homelessness triggers nuclear war...

Posted by: Davis X. Machina | Aug 5, 2007 12:19:31 PM

sorry to stray a bit,
but in thinking about the exhaustion of the planet and global warming....it makes me think about global thawing, and the need to recommend an excellent, new film that just opened, called "Sunshine".
.....it is a thriller, with some very moving and beautiful moments that increase appreciation for the gifts of earth and ....Sunshine!!!!
i recommend seeing this film!

Posted by: jacqueline | Aug 5, 2007 1:36:56 PM

I never can figure out why some enviromentalists get sidetracked in agruments like this, what we need are better public policies that remove harmful subsidies and capture the environmental externalities better. That way one wouldn't have to read five life cycle studies everyday in a fairly fruitless attempt, to do one's part.

Posted by: AJ | Aug 5, 2007 2:28:35 PM

That's an irritating article, but a good example of how rightwing propaganda works.

The real comparison might just as well be with carbon produced growing organic grains to eat. Long term tests have showed that organic farming is just as productive as farming with fertilizers and pesticides. See Rodale Press for reports on these studies.

I'm guessing Goodall also diddled the calorie burning by the driver compared with the walker. Everybody's been doing that, one way or the other, for their various purposes, for over 200 years.

So the real question is why a "Green" put out such a stupid and false soundbite, and anyone who was politically active in the early 70s can probably guess where this might go.

Maybe The Times just shrewdly highlited a nutcase, or maybe there's something behind the scenes...hard to tell, so best just to focus on the science, which certainly isn't validated by anything found in the article.

Posted by: serial catowner | Aug 5, 2007 2:52:30 PM

You do have to be awed by the stunning conclusion of this "environmentalist" Goodall- we can save the environment and "benefit" from the wonders of modern life if we become as caged and corpulent as our beasts raised for slaughter.

Posted by: serial catowner | Aug 5, 2007 2:56:39 PM

Buy local.

Posted by: Sanpete | Aug 5, 2007 3:36:01 PM

If you live in Manhattan and walk to the store, you're likely to be going a much shorter distance than someone who lives in Northern Virginia and battles 6-lane commercial arterial roads to the nearest strip mall. So a better comparison would have been a half mile walk with a 6 mile drive. Auto-oriented land uses are lower density and require greater distances traveled.

Along with the fact that nobody gets 100% of their calories from beef.

Horrible comparison.

Posted by: tmchale | Aug 5, 2007 4:56:14 PM

High school policy debate is full of arguments like this.

Remind me to show you how ending homelessness triggers nuclear war...

That is absolutely the perfect response to this article. Thank you.

Posted by: NickS | Aug 5, 2007 5:11:26 PM

The high school debate comment is dead on. I think I'm going to steal that one for a LOT of purposes.

Having said that, sanpete is exactly correct. From a global standpoint, buying local is even more important than the content of the diet. Of course, buying local tends to be higher quality, and tends at least somewhat to the organic, but the principle applies, no matter.

Posted by: drinkof | Aug 5, 2007 5:24:06 PM

The argument has a glaring fallacy. The average person isn't going to forgo the extra calories if he or she doesn't walk to the store. He's just going to eat them and not go to the store.

Most Americans have plenty of calories to spare for exercise and the like.

Posted by: Jason G. | Aug 5, 2007 6:04:59 PM

Sanpete:

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007/07/how-much-better.html

You're damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Posted by: hmmmm | Aug 5, 2007 6:45:20 PM

Well, I'm sure there's something to that hmmmm, but I'm pertty sure it usually works out better locally, especially with centralized farmers' markets and supermarkets that buy locally, as some do now. There are other reasons to buy local too, not least to help preserve local green space and get good-tasting food (!).

Posted by: Sanpete | Aug 5, 2007 9:27:32 PM

It's bunk. GHGs are not a problem per se, we'd freeze without them. It is the extra GHGs that result from a variety of causes that increase the normal concentrations. Chief among those causes is the use of fossil fuels since they dig up buried carbon and shoot it into the current working set, increasing the amount of carbon in the cycle at a given time.

There is no way to do harm by simply cycling the existing carbon. The carbon will cycle from the air, to plants, and back again whether it makes a stop in a cow's gut, or your gut, or not.

Bacteria see to that, and it's a good thing or we'd be buried in dead leaves and twigs. Dust to dust. Everything dies and rots. All cows do is to harbor those bacteria in their guts, and so can digest stuff that people, pigs, chickens, horses etc. pass undigested. To cows it's food, to all other non-ruminants it's just fiber that helps them make.

There are other things that increase the working set size and mung up the carbon cycle. Farming is a chief culprit as is deforestation. In both cases the problem is that carbon that has been sequestered, taken out of the working set, is released.

Plowing the land for cereals and pulses, destroying the grasslands that had held so much carbon and preventing more from accumulating, has been going on for thousands of years but has increased with population growth.

If you really want to do right then eat only beef (or goat, deer etc. - ruminants) that is raised on a grass diet on permanent pastures of deep rooted perennial grasses. Eat less cereal since it is the most environmentally destructive. Do this and you will come closer to a carbon neutral diet.

Walk as much as you like. It's good for you.

Posted by: back40 | Aug 5, 2007 11:55:47 PM

i think this illustrates mr. klein's suceptibility to riht wing propaganda techniques.

this article appeared in a rupert murdoch owned paper.

it cites "a leading environmentalist" without identifying WHY he is considered "leading".

it includes a lot of "facts" that ignore externalities (i.e. the reasons for choosing paper over plastic are varied, and not necessarily based on energy consumption)

i hoped that after having been proven catastrophically wrong about the war in iraq, he would be a bit more skeptical.

my bad.

Posted by: rageahol | Aug 6, 2007 12:10:02 AM

goddamn, i always et punked by guestblogers. i should read the byline, but it says "ezra klein" right at the top of the page.

Posted by: rageahol | Aug 6, 2007 12:10:58 AM

Their calculations, it seems, also fail to take into account the amount of energy it takes to drill, refine, and then distribute the oil as well. Put that into the equation, there's no way walking doesn't save you.

Posted by: Andrew L | Aug 6, 2007 1:24:40 AM

Local is not always the best choice.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/opinion/06mcwilliams.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Posted by: mijnheer | Aug 6, 2007 1:53:45 AM

Good article. Local's particularly good for what arrives better at your house than what comes from further away, like many fruits and vegetables. Wouldn't surprise me if English mutton tasted better in Britain than mutton from New Zealand. Not sure how much carbon that's worth.

Posted by: Sanpete | Aug 6, 2007 5:12:41 AM

i just can't take any of this green crap seriously. as long as the mainstream (of either the US polity or the green enviro fringe in the US) does not strongly come out in support of a carbon tax, i do not consider their efforts remotely serious.

i know exactly what to do. i will not hesitate to eat meat, drive the 500 feet to my local grocery store, drive the 700 feet to my gym, drive the 1000 feet to yoga classes, as long as gasoline is effectively subsidized in the US.

some local car dealers keep sending me these offers on SUVs (like $5000 off '07 jeep grand cherokee). i guess the summer gas price increases have left many guzzlers on the lot. hmm.... it's simple math to figure out, for how many miles driven a year, would a steeply discounted detroit gasguzzler be cheaper to own for the next 5 years than more fuel efficient imports. now, if there is a realistic chance of a non-trivial (say at least $2/gallon, phased in over 10 years) increase in gas tax in the next few years, it would change my calculations.

everyone who talks about small scale voluntary approaches at saving energy, reducing co2 emissions, while not actively and openly supporting a carbon tax in the US, is a hypocrite. oh, it makes you feel so virtuous while doing aboslutely nothing. go practice your catwalk routine in front of your closet mirror a few more thousand times.

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