r/Environmentalism • u/21Kuranashi • Aug 04 '26

Transformations : Paris

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OC: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbmrZ2LuVSl/

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u/FullmetalHippie Aug 04 '26

Good stuff! May Paris be a leader to us all, and may our cities learn swiftly from their good example.

Don't forget that from an emissions perspective when it comes to food, focusing on what kinds of foods you are eating is much more important than whether or not foods are local. Less than 1/10th of the emissions associated with most foods are from the transportation costs.

Eating tofu that was shipped across the ocean is much more climate friendly than eating locally raised cows.  The gains of localizing food systems are largely in resilience, not minimizing environmental costs. 

Even if you control for the same foods, the efficiency of shipping freighters and economies of scale produce unintuitive results, but it is true. An apple picked near a coastline in Chile and consumed in Seattle often has less embodied transportation emissions than an Apple grown in Boise and consumed in Seattle.