Green Posturing

The mayor of Denver has challenged the organizers of the 2008 Democratic National Convention to "make this the greenest convention in the history of the planet." The Wall Street Journal reported that they've hired environmental activist Andrea Robinson as Director of Greening. How does one become an activist for a living anyway? Is that really a valid career, going around to protest rallies and writing angry letters to politicians? I digress...

The WSJ article contains alot of gems, like the litany of liberal interest groups each making demands that ultimately over-constrain the problem:

The host committee for the Democratic National Convention wanted 15,000 fanny packs for volunteers. But they had to be made of organic cotton. By unionized labor. In the USA.

Official merchandiser Bob DeMasse scoured the country. His weary conclusion: "That just doesn't exist."

This is absurd on so many levels, I don't know where to begin. There is no logic to the position that trading with other countries, or products made by non-union labor, or cotton that is grown with modern farming techniques are bad for us as a society. I look at this and wonder if the Dems wish that the miracle of the industrial age (enabling the dramatic rise in living standards we enjoy today) never happened. Economics says that competition, another name for trade, forces improvements in productivity, which in turn reduces costs for everyone. Unions, nationalism, and unfounded superstitions about agricultural technology are all antithetical to those goals.

Speaking of agriculture, the real kicker was the description of the catering guidelines:

No fried food. And, on the theory that nutritious food is more vibrant, each meal should include "at least three of the following colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple, and white." (Garnishes don't count.) At least 70% of ingredients should be organic or grown locally, to minimize emissions from fuel burned during transportation.

The rainbow food claim sounds like typical new age unscientific garbage. It may be good for culinary artistry, but I doubt that color has any correlation with nutrition. A pile of gray sunflower seeds can pack some vitamins and other essentials, can't it?

The second claim about local food is a common meme going around in enviromental circles these days. It's adherents even have a name: localvores. Trouble is, the idea that local food uses less fuel during transport is actually wrong in most cases. The Boston Globe had an article in 2007 explaining the details:

Judged by unit of weight, ship and rail transport in particular are highly energy efficient. Financial considerations force shippers to pack as much as they can into their cargo containers, whether they're being carried by ship, rail, or truck, and to ensure that they rarely make a return trip empty. And because of their size, container ships and trains enjoy impressive economies of scale. The marginal extra energy it takes to transport a single bunch of bananas packed in with 60,000 tons of other cargo on a container ship is more than an order of magnitude less than that required to move them with a couple hundred pounds of cargo in a car or small truck.

"Local food systems are often built around small-scale logistics," says Chris Foster, a research fellow at England's Manchester Business School and co-author of a December 2006 study on the environmental impacts of food production and consumption commissioned for Britain's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. "You begin to make more trips in cars. More food is shifted around in small trucks and vans, which are relatively energy-inefficient ways of moving."