Peak Oil and Localism
Think about the things in your life. Your clothing. Your food. Your furniture. Think about it all, everything tangible that surrounds you in daily life. How much of that stuff was created within 100 miles of where you live, or where you bought it? The distances traveled by the products we buy are truly staggering. I read an article once that noted a study in Germany of strawberry yogurt; it found that the inputs to a container of yogurt traveled a total of something like 3000 miles before landing on the table, even though the strawberries and all the other food ingredients were produced inside the country. All of this travel led to a container of yogurt that was metaphorically drenched in oil. As another example, Emily and I recently went to the local unfinished wood furniture store downtown, to look for a new dresser (we’re still using some pretty sad furniture from our broke college days). As it turned out, the one we liked best was built by a company out of North Carolina that recently went out of ...
Posted on February 14, 2008 11:18:47 AM EST
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