Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Quote from alarmist Bill McKibben

From Vermont public radio here:
...More big box stores on the far outskirts of town? These are global warming machines. That's what they produce, more than anything else.
Actually, I think some of those stores also distribute fairly important stuff like food, clothing, building materials, etc.

It's probably asking too much, but I wonder if Bill would mind showing us his math here--for starters, I'd like to see his calculation of how much global temperature would be reduced by 2050 if we banned all big box stores today.

1 comment:

Noah said...

Although I cannot account for his math, Mckibben is correct that CO2 is a box stores primary product. After the manufacturing of the products, there is still the shipping. Many of these products are wastefully shipped back and forth across not only the U.S. but the world, traveling from wharehouse to wharehouse while waiting to reach a consumer. Mckibben simply stresses that smaller local economies are much more efficient. The downside is that it is much cheaper to pay the low wages of the chineese worker and buy the product in bulk, rather than pay the higher wages of an American. The cheapness of the labor is what the bargain shopper is looking for.
If we could adapt the local economy ideas we would not only cut down on carbon emmisions, we would also see our economy boom because you would be buying only localy produced products, which would in turn create more jobs.

Bill Mckibbens logic is undeniable sorry I don't have the math for you