The personal really is political: ""The most political act we do on a daily basis is to eat, as our actions affect farms, landscapes and food businesses,"
No matter of indifference to loving-our-neighbours-as-ourselves Christians, then.
From the point of view of practical politics this a a great piece of work in domonstrating what the environmentally-related externalities of western food consumption really are: that is to say what costs don't get passed on to the consumer in the price but are passedonto others, usually future generations or marginalised people in the present, usually via the environmental damage.
"Professor Pretty and his colleague Tim Lang, from City University, UK, painstakingly estimated the environmental price tag on each stage of the food production process. That price might reflect, for example, the clean-up costs following pollution, or the loss of profits caused by erosion damage. The price of food is disguising externalised costs - damage to the environment, damage to climate, damage to infrastructure and the cost of transporting food on roads," Professor Lang told the BBC News website. "
I think that this article or rather the study it's based on will prove to be quite important in policy debate. As the article points out there will have to be some imaginitive policy making but if the commitment to Kyoto and the like means anything then this is good research. And painstaking by the look of it.
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Local food 'greener than organic' See also 'Food less travelled'.
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