Subject: Re: Wind & Solar
Shipping a case of pinot noir from France or chardonnay from Australia for consumption within local distribution distance of west coast vineyards, only to sell all of the bottles at around the same price point? By weight, the products are almost all glass and water.

The reasoning sounds so simple, but that's why it's important to debunk it. If there are no subsidies and it costs (say) $0.25 to ship an incremental bottle, you likely haven't used as much energy (or created as much energy-related pollution) as, say, driving a mile in a big SUV to a local farmers' market.*

True, maybe it was $0.25 worth of energy that didn't really have to be used, but it really is one of those fields of endeavour that you have to have a sense of proportion. Sweating the little stuff is not just a waste of time, it is actively bad because it distracts from what's actually important and causes many to throw up their hands in "it's all the same, you can't win" surrender.

Subsidies and negative externalities certainly matter, but they generally don't change the "sort order" of activities or products by much. Most things aren't subsidized by more than 100% of their cost, and the true economic cost of most bad externalities are not more than a few times the size of the market cost of the same thing.

If you really want to be green with a sense of proportion? Don't have kids (bigger factor than all other factors combined), be dirt poor (bigger factor than all remaining factors combined), don't drive or fly much (mainly walk to work), and don't buy beef or lamb.

Jim


* A typical Australia-to-Europe container ship run uses around 2 million gallons of bunker fuel.
It would typically hold around 10000 20 ft containers, so 200 gallons of fuel burned per container.
A typical (but full) 20ft container will hold around 10000 standard sized bottles of wine for shipment, so .02 gallons of fuel per bottle of wine, about 2.6 US fluid ounces. Like burning a single candle during your dinner with that wine from the other side of the planet.
A large SUV might get 0.3 to 0.5 miles on that much gasoline.

As elann pointed out, the fact that the shipping is very cheap is an outstanding clue that it's not all that bad environmentally.

Jim