Shipping something around the world on a giant ship is spectacularly fuel efficient, so it's not the distance that matters. If it weren't fuel efficient, those things would be expensive...

You do have to do a mental adjustment for things that are heavily subsidized or have large negative externalities, as they can have large costs that don't show up in the sticker price.

And it's these negative externalities -- where the market price in no way appropriately reflects the environmental costs incurred in their extraction and consumption -- that are the crux of the objection to the "cost paid reflects the energy consumption and thus the environmental impact" thesis propounded in this thread. It's not a 'good rule of thumb' when the discussion is centered around environmental costs.

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.

I hear Charlie Munger inveighing against the stupidity of burning our long chain hydrocarbon reserves for fuel, whether it be an SUV to the grocery store or a behemoth of a container ship banging off whales all the way across the Pacific.

--sutton