"Big Foot" quote from The New Yorker Magazine

"As a source of global warming, the food we eat-and how we eat it-is no more significant than the way we make clothes or travel or heat our homes and offices. It certainly doesn't compare to the impact made by tens of thousands of factories scattered throughout the world. Yet food carries enormous symbolic power, so the concept of "food miles"-the distance a product travels from the farm to your home-is often used as a kind of shorthand to talk about climate change in general. "We have to remember our goal: reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses," John Murlis told me not long ago when we met in London. "That should be the world's biggest priority." Murlis is the chief scientific adviser to the Carbon Neutral Company, which helps corporations adopt policies to reduce their carbon footprint as well as those of the products they sell. He has also served as the director of strategy and chief scientist for Britan's Environment Agency. Murlis worries that in our collective rush to make choices that display personal virtue we may be losing sight of the larger problem. "Would a carbon label on every product help us?" he asked. "I wonder. You can feel very good about the organic potatoes you buy from a farm near your home, but half the emissions-and half the footprint-from those potatoes could come from the energy you use to cook them. If you leave the lid off, boil them at a high heat, and then mash your potatoes, from a carbon standpoint you might as well drive to McDonald's and spend your money buying an order of French Fries."

and later in the article...

"The environmental burden imposed by importing apples from New Zealand to Northern Europe or New York can be lower than if the apples were raised fifty miles away. "In New Zealand they have more sunshine than in the UK, which helps productivity." Williams explained. That means the yield of New Zealand apples far exceeds the yield of those grown in northern climates, so the energy required for farmers to grow the crop is correspondingly lower. It also helps that the electricity in New Zealand is mostly generated by renewable sources, none of which emit large amounts of CO2. Researchers at Lincoln University in Christchurch found that lamb raised in New Zealand wand shipped eleven thousand miles by boat to England produced... about a fourth of the (emissions) produced by British lamb. In part, that is because the pastures in New Zealand need far less fertilizer than most grazing land in Britan (or in many parts of the United States). Similarly, importing beans from Uganda or Kenya-where the farms are small, tractor use is limited, and the fertilizer is almost always manure-tends to be more efficient than growing beans in Europe, with its reliance on energy-dependent irrigation systems."

Michael Specter, "Big Foot"
The New Yorker, Feb 25, 2008
newyorker.com