The cost in carbon of a thing is complicated, and this sort of X (local) is good, and Y (non-local) is bad causes a lot of the issues.
There was a debate about Dutch flowers vs Kenyan. The debate was framed as "local vs grown in sunshine", e.g. the cost of growing in cold greenhouses vs sunshine. I think you know where this is going...
https://www.amazon.com/Drawdown-Comprehensive-Proposed-Rever... provides the context needed to choose between options, and the solutions are often odd, like replacing old fridges which has a HUGE climate change benefit (because the refrigerants are 1,000s of times worse than CO2), but that's not a story that is told because, well I think complicated narratives lose to simpler ones.
If you're (rightly) concerned about climate change there is a lot you can do.
Here are three good resources.
Bret Victor's "What can a technologist do about climate change" is wonderful tech overview [0].
"Drawdown", a recent book which enumerates and stack-ranks the wide array of techniques we have which return the atmosphere to a safe composition. [1]
Finally, a self-pitch, we just launched our new site, ClimateAction.tech [2] with a guide for technology employees who are interested in making their companies more sustainable (feedback welcome, @samp or the email on the site)
There was a debate about Dutch flowers vs Kenyan. The debate was framed as "local vs grown in sunshine", e.g. the cost of growing in cold greenhouses vs sunshine. I think you know where this is going...
https://www.amazon.com/Drawdown-Comprehensive-Proposed-Rever... provides the context needed to choose between options, and the solutions are often odd, like replacing old fridges which has a HUGE climate change benefit (because the refrigerants are 1,000s of times worse than CO2), but that's not a story that is told because, well I think complicated narratives lose to simpler ones.
Here are three good resources.
Bret Victor's "What can a technologist do about climate change" is wonderful tech overview [0].
"Drawdown", a recent book which enumerates and stack-ranks the wide array of techniques we have which return the atmosphere to a safe composition. [1]
Finally, a self-pitch, we just launched our new site, ClimateAction.tech [2] with a guide for technology employees who are interested in making their companies more sustainable (feedback welcome, @samp or the email on the site)
[0] http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/ [1] https://smile.amazon.com/Drawdown-Comprehensive-Proposed-Rev... [2] ClimateAction.tech