People who like eating food are not the problem. The people who like other people to be able to eat only ****** cheap food are. So are the people who won't pay them enough be able to afford anything other than ****** cheap food, and the people whose money is invested in fossil fuels.
Those people are also the ones complaining the loudest. Ordinary people don't have much of a say about how their food is produced, but the manufacturers always blame
them: 'I would love to go organic and let my chickens and pigs to live long and fulfilling lives, but the customers won't pay me to do so.
They, the consumers,
force me to
torture the chickens and produce food full of pesticides and other poison!'
My cheap chicken and pasta and apples and bread come from pretty close by, and I find it hard to believe raising a wholesome happy long-lived chicken causes a lot less greenhouse emissions than a short-lived hormone-jacked one,
on a per-chicken basis. If I pay more it's for better quality and variety, not lower emissions. I bet even if I paid the going rate to eat fresh salmon and raspberries all year long (I don't), I'd be getting the benefit of massive external costs borne by others who themselves couldn't afford that food.
ETA: One of my pet peeves: Cities and suburbs could lower CO
2 emissions substantially by becoming
more bike friendly. And on top of that, it would improve people's health considerably.
No argument there. The "we don't need a bike rack outside the office, no one bicycles to work" problem is pervasive at every level. The troublemaker employee who suffers being nearly run over in the parking lot, having their bike stolen, and getting reprimanded for chaining it to some essential decorative lamppost can eventually get the bike rack installed, but that doesn't mean it will get used by anyone else.
The real problem is, bicycling to work sucks. I've done it, for years. It's good for your health, if you don't get maimed or killed in traffic, but there's also rain, wind, heat, cold, darkness, ice, fatigue, and time. It's not fun. What it is, besides healthy (with said caveats), is cheap.
The "solution" is shortages of fossil fuels that make owning and operating a car is too expensive for most of the employed people in the area. Bicycles will have their day. But this will not be seen as progress.
