04 March 2005

Lies, damned lies and monetary values

The headline on this item is: "Global food trade 'not hurting climate'" and purports to be saying that the envirnmental costs of trucking and flying food around are negligible. However what it appears actually to be saying is: "Calculating the environmental impact of food shopping in monetary terms, the report found that the environmental cost of a person's typical weekly expenditure of �24.79 was �2.91."
In other words it's not the environmental impact that is calculated but the monetary cost of that impact. Fair enough in one sense but at over 10% of the price ... and that is given that "the environmental impact of global food miles was "trivial", as most people's weekly shop comprised food grown in the UK or elsewhere in Europe". I'm sorry it doesn't wash: they can't be serious that all that freighting is something we wouldn't be better without in environmental terms... without the whole report it's hard to tell but it is suspicious and 10%+ isn't negligible: heck it's more than a lot of producers get for growing the food!
FT.com / World / UK - Global food trade 'not hurting climate':

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