The difficulties of calculating “carbon footprint”
I read this article in the New York times a few weeks ago, entitled “How Green Is My Orange?”:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/business/22pepsi.htm
It outlines some of the difficulties associated with trying to determine the carbon footprint (or, in fact, any other environmental footprint) of consumer products. One problem is that a lot of that data is hidden or not easily accessible (how many pounds did the truck haul, how many gallons of gas did it use, how many miles out of its way did it go to deliver to your store, etc.). Another problem is to know where to stop: Do we count fuel used by farmers to power their tractors? How about the fuel used to operate tanker trucks to deliver the fuel to the farmers? What about the fuel used to fly an oil company executive to the Middle East to secure a contract for more oil, which was then used to make the gasoline? In what could be described as the reverse corollary to the Butterfly Effect, an unimaginable tree of events transpired to bring any product to any particular storefront. Even the environmental cost of preparing such a report should theoretically be considered in the report itself.
The market is supposed to collapse all of this complexity and history into a single number: the price. But the problem is that, with conflicting moral views and priorities, some consumers inevitably won’t agree with the way in which the complexities were collapsed (e.g. Should pollution be taxed? Should the government subsidize oil drilling?), and will demand more information about the history of their product. But exactly how much information the bulk of consumers want — and are willing to pay for — has not exactly been settled. I fear that catch-all, broad labels such as “organic” and “local” will suffer the same fate as price — just as suppliers often sacrifice the environment or human welfare to drive down price, they could just as easily (and often do) sacrifice the environment or human welfare to satisfy requirements for labeling their products “local” or “organic”. At the same time, metrics complex enough to provide the information necessary to make informed decisions remain elusive. It’s a difficult problem, and one I don’t think is going to be solved quickly or easily.
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:27 am
I realize that this is an old post but I do want to comment.
It would be interesting to know the breakdown of environmental costs associated with produce, but it is more important to know that those environmental costs will be reduced over time. Clearly, the answer is a revenue-neutral carbon tax with border tax adjustments (facilitated thru current trade agreements like NAFTA). For more information see carbontax.org.
Still, it would be nice to know more about how my food is grown and transported. The problem seems to be that the job of the middle man is to obscure information about the actual producer. Otherwise they might be cut out of the deal if the economies of scale are large enough. That doesn’t mean it is not worth attempting, just that regulatory reform might be needed. I wonder if given the food scares in the last couple of years, whether it might be politically viable to get a bill passed providing more information to the consumer.