Jay Currie

De-linking household-type economic decisions (asparagus or beets?) from money considerations, and replacing them with an environmental standard of value, creates the same species of confusion. The problem of determining which bag of onions might involve the release of the least carbon would require the solving of a vast array of equations, too great for the human mind even to teach a computer to solve. Since every purchase made in a free economy is chiefly a purchase of many kinds of stored energy, it may even be that buying the cheapest food is the closest possible approximation humans can make to measuring their “environmental footprint” at the supermarket. colby cosh

What drives me crazy about greenies is how they never let the idea of complexity interfere with their sense of knowing what’s best. Thus you have the idiocy of using biofuel (burning food which raises the price of food and directly creates hunger, malnutrition and death) all to prevent the emission of CO2 which might, possibly raise the Earth’s temperature which may, in some circumstances, lead, indirectly to a few future deaths.

I am a huge fan of buying locally and in season. It has nothing to do with green thinking; rather it has to do with the taste of really fresh produce. If we were going to be living in this house a little longer we’d have a garden for really, really fresh flavour. But it is simply silly to make a fetish out of buying locally or a hundred mile diet because there are lots of things which can, but should not be, grown locally. Raising grain in the Cowichen Valley is likely possible but it would be absurdly inefficient and would push out other, more suitable crops. So, from the go, bread would not be in my hundred mile cart. Neither would oranges, mangos or other tropical and sub-tropical fruit. Now, while I like blackberries and blueberries and such like, I am not convinced ecotopia requires me to eat only the fruits and berries which grow indigenously.

And, I note, the Hundred Mile diet folks live in Vancouver – other than Victoria, the most temperate spot in Canada right next to the Pacific ocean for salmon, oysters and scallops.

In fact, what such diet and energy fads are about is economic illiteracy combined with an authoritarian streak. They are efforts to make peoples lives more difficult for no particularly good reason. And they should be resisted to the very last drop of the Volanay and slice of imported, unpasteurized, Brie.