alt Hacker NewsIf there was a direct and maintained electric train route + stronger food regulation in the US you could dine on fresh local produce with a lower carbon footprint.
International cooperation and trade is great, but in the US specifically the economic behemoths have used globalization to paper over the real problems that we face at home (we haven't truly invested in infrastructure in a long time, the meat we produce is rejected on health standards abroad, etc). I doubt the smokescreen will last much longer with Trump et al blowing up international agreements.
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I'd first question whether the NY Times' accounting included the carbon footprint within NZ, where the lambs are probably raised far from the shipping piers. Then you've got the infrastructure and power requirements for freezing for the long ocean voyage. Then...
After that, I'd question local sheep farmers about how suitable upstate NY is for raising lambs, compared to NZ. And about the regulatory and business environment they face. Agriculture in the US is a hellish mess, and the great majority of its problems are caused by neither its associated carbon emissions nor by underinvesting in transportation infrastructure.
NYers dine on fresh local produce without subsidies or government interference.
Farm fresh vegetable produce is perishable and goes from fresh to wilted/rotten very quickly. It is in the capitalist interest with no regulation to move fresh produce as quickly as possible to the supermarkets and onto the shelves. Every day trucks bring fresh produce from NJ and LI and upstate NY into the city and it immediately goes onto the shelves for sale. No communist system could do it as well.
Produce is an extremely profitable segment of supermarket sales. The markups are very low (no communist could compete) but the turnover is very quick. While a can of beans might sit there a few weeks, customers love fresh produce. So hypothetically, they could make a 0.5% markup (you going to take public transit to NJ to buy produce a half a point cheaper?), but that's every week, so in a year it's a healthy 25% markup for the supermarket's annual investment. I made up the numbers to explain the concept, but that in a nutshell is supermarket economics. Maybe they mark up 2% and the annualized profit is 100%. Tiny margin, healthy profit, point made. Very efficient, happy customers, happy supermarkets.
Trucks bring produce farm to table, maybe a distribution stop. Trains are for bulk stuff and not route flexible, so it's not clear they contribute any advantage to the mix, but I love me trains too.
And it's not just NYer's, that's just an urban extreme example, every supermarket chain the the country operates like this.
>If there was a direct and maintained electric train route
What do you mean by this? Most US freight trains are already diesel electric. German freight uses overhead electric wires on most of the shared passenger rail network, which is great, but doesn’t make it any easier or faster to deliver freight to consumers. Are you thinking of high speed rail? Bullet and maglev trains aren’t used to deliver freight anywhere globally that I’m aware of.