Why industry is going green on the quiet
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Organic farming resorts only to non-synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. Unless these are provably bad, in which case some synthetic substances are allowed.
It feels awkward having to state, in the most technological age mankind has seen, that the divide between organic and synthetic is not the same as the one between sustainable and unsustainable, nor between safe and unsafe for human beings.
I suspect one of the Portuguese wineries mentioned in the article to be Esporão, that has recently converted to Organic Farming. This was not, coincidently, done in a inconspicuous way, but rather publicized by corporate PR in sustainable farming venues, rather disingenuously I should say.[1][2]
On one occasion, and for lack of time for QnA, I didn't get the opportunity to ask a very simple question:
- Once engaged in Organic Farming, a farmer is limited in the range of permissible practices, and synthetic pesticides are off limits. On the other hand, if engaged in Integrated Farming, a well known farming standard in the EU, a farmer can still proceed according to the precepts of Organic Farming if one so chooses. Why, then, is that company committed to Organic Farming?
I suspect the reason is the possibility of labelling their products as such.[3] Marketing - not love for the environment - is behind the move.
So regarding the headline question, soft PR avoids the accusation of greenwashing in a world of corporate virtue signalling.
[1] https://www.esporao.com/en/
[2] Search results for organic farming: https://www.esporao.com/en/?s=organic+farming
[3] Example of label: https://www.esporao.com/en/olive-oil/organic-olive-oil-2017/
It’s citing a specific example where a company switched to organic farming because it was more sustainable, specifically making the soil more sustainable.
My interpretation comes from this kind of phrasing, were it is assumed that the shift towards organic farming was a move towards sustainability.
It’s again referencing a specific organic practice which is sustainable.
> This phenomenon is not limited to the clothing industry. The UK organic groceries market has been expanding steadily for the past eight years.
Without any explanation given of how this relates to sustainability, they imply that the relationship between organic and sustainable is obvious. That looks like conflation to me.
The this here refers to “whereby innovations are silently enacted and kept from the rest of the industry” which is not sustainability. Further, it calls this practice “secret sustainability” and the article itself encloses it in quotes indicating it’s using this term out of convenience, and that it’s not actually a precise term.
The use of quotes around secret sustainability is the article explicitly pointing out that it does not consider this an accurate term, and is using it extremely loosely.
Animal farming is more than order of magnitude worse.
A lot of industrial farming developed that way due to access to cheap energy - but this is not sustainable.
In the US, we use less energy growing and harvesting food than we do cooking food. Total ag energy use is a tiny fraction of the total energy use in the economy.
Energy-intensive agriculture is perfectly sustainable. There's more than enough renewable energy available.
The one resource I would worry about is phosphorus, but this will be a problem for "organic" farming too. The solution there is to minimize erosion, recycle phosphorus-bearing wastes, build up sparingly soluble phosphate reserves in soils (and don't let erosion wash those away), and ultimately make up for losses by exploiting very low quality phosphate ores (crustal average is 0.1% P).
Here's a link for the numbers from 2014.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2017/januaryfebruary/en...
In that year, ag used 1.74% of US energy consumption. 29% of that was for fertilizer. As I said, the absolute amount of energy used in farming is really rather small, even for "energy intensive" agriculture. That's because the ag sector is such a small part of the US economy (< 1% of GDP).
citation needed.
To help you along, I'll bring up the part that's most problematic, IMO: the production of nitrous oxide from nitrogen fertilizer. But N fertilizer is pretty much required to get yields sufficient to feed the world, so that's a problem that's going to have to be solved.
The issue is using this stuff inherently means a future spike in prices.
The alternative then being a present spike in prices? I don't see how that's better.
Now switching to B means paying those capital costs. However, equipment has a finite lifespan so if you time the transition to the point when you need to replace A anyway it’s essentially free.
At the consumer level electric cars are a reasonable approximation of this. For many people, TCO is about the same, but switching early is a poor choice. Similarly, for electric companies wind and solar are unlikely to outcompete existing coal power plants, but it can cheaply replace yet to be constructed coal power plants.
edit: nor is there meaningful capital inertia behind synthetic vs. other fertilization.
To not use synthetic fertilizer, today, would increase food costs today. To run out of synthetic fertilizer e.g. 150 years from now would increase food costs an equal or lesser amount. Potentially lesser as a result of increased time to develop better sustainable methods. Integrating cost over the next e.g. 250 years, it will always be cheaper (better) to use the non-sustainable resources at the time sustainable methods are most expensive (today). Externalities, like global warming aside, as they aren't relevant to the example of fertilizer I was replying to.
For example subsidies play such a huge role in agriculture we are far from the economic optimal usage just a local optima under current tax law. Consider what happens if we stop ethanol subsidies while paying some farmers to keep some fields fallow. ~40 percent less corn * 96,000,000 acres is quite a bit less fertilizer.
That’s not a recommendation, just a demonstration that the solution space is huge. Different subsidies and taxes can make a huge difference.
Farmers have poor leverage on produce retail prices, and depending on the soil and climate they have, the local markets and distributors, a limited range of crops is available. Once chosen, they simply maximize yield.
As for permanent crops, farmers simply maximize yield.
More realistic examples are Center Pivot Irrigation Systems which don’t utilize all available land. https://extension.uga.edu/publications/detail.html?number=B8...
And central pivot irrigation increases total production, and average yields as well, when the alternative is rainfall.
Many central pivots near me have permanent crops in most of the corners, usually with drip irrigation. Also worthy of notice is not all land lots are neat squares, and some corners end up being quite small.
In areas with high average rainfall central pivot are often not supplemented by other irrigation systems or different crops. Sure, drip could increase yields slightly, but it’s not considered to be worth both the expense and hassle.
In other words, standard agricultural practice varies by location to maximize profit by increasing yield, when it’s cost effective to do so.
PS: Posting that feels like a really nitpicking argument as I think we both agree with what’s going on. But, I get annoyed when people talk about maximizing yield as a shorthand for maximizing profit. It’s something of a social convention where you can’t say you’re trying to make more money even when talking about how you make more money.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/httpblogs...
> What makes organic farming different, then? It's not the use of pesticides, it's the origin of the pesticides used. Organic pesticides are those that are derived from natural sources and processed lightly if at all before use. This is different than the current pesticides used by conventional agriculture, which are generally synthetic. It has been assumed for years that pesticides that occur naturally (in certain plants, for example) are somehow better for us and the environment than those that have been created by man. As more research is done into their toxicity, however, this simply isn't true, either. Many natural pesticides have been found to be potential - or serious - health risks.2
> Not only are organic pesticides not safe, they might actually be worse than the ones used by the conventional agriculture industry. Canadian scientists pitted 'reduced-risk' organic and synthetic pesticides against each other in controlling a problematic pest, the soybean aphid. They found that not only were the synthetic pesticides more effective means of control, the organic pesticides were more ecologically damaging, including causing higher mortality in other, non-target species like the aphid's predators
This means organic farms cannot use a modern pesticide even when that pesticide is known to be safer, more efficient or more sustainable, purely on the grounds that it isn't a "natural" pesticide. That's pseudoscience.
Sustainable farming should be based on science and facts. Instead, farmers are following arbitrary organic farming rules so they can label their produce as "organic" and charge more. I want a system where the most sustainable farming approaches are encouraged (e.g. via taxes, better labelling) instead of being held back by the "organic" label.
This is not exactly truthful, at least in the United States. Organic farmers are required to manage competitor organisms with non-chemical methods as a matter of practice. They are only permitted to use approved organic pesticides when the other means are insufficient, and it has to be documented. If an ostensibly organic farm relies on chemical management routinely, that violates the letter and the spirit of the organic program regulations and should cause certification to be withdrawn.
>b) Pest problems may be controlled through mechanical or physical methods including but not limited to:
(1) Augmentation or introduction of predators or parasites of the pest species;
(2) Development of habitat for natural enemies of pests;
(3) Nonsynthetic controls such as lures, traps, and repellents.
(c) Weed problems may be controlled through:
(1) Mulching with fully biodegradable materials;
(2) Mowing;
(3) Livestock grazing;
(4) Hand weeding and mechanical cultivation;
(5) Flame, heat, or electrical means; or
(6) Plastic or other synthetic mulches: Provided, That, they are removed from the field at the end of the growing or harvest season.
(d) Disease problems may be controlled through:
(1) Management practices which suppress the spread of disease organisms; or
(2) Application of nonsynthetic biological, botanical, or mineral inputs.
(e) When the practices provided for in paragraphs (a) through (d) of this section are insufficient to prevent or control crop pests, weeds, and diseases, a biological or botanical substance or a substance included on the National List of synthetic substances allowed for use in organic crop production may be applied to prevent, suppress, or control pests, weeds, or diseases: Provided, That, the conditions for using the substance are documented in the organic system plan.
(f) The producer must not use lumber treated with arsenate or other prohibited materials for new installations or replacement purposes in contact with soil or livestock.
Tl;dr, you’re only permitted to use pesticides in organic farming when nothing else works to control the organisms, and you have to stop using them as soon as the organisms are controlled. Organic farmers are not permitted to routinely spray their fields.
[0] https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=94361624bc8858349d...
And if the non-chemical methods + modern pesticides works out to be safer and more sustainable than the non-chemical methods + organic approved pesticides? Then you can't call it organic. That's not a science based approach.
If people really care about the environment, they should be advocating the best farming approaches we can find, not one that's based around the naturalistic fallacy that plays into fear the public have about "non-natural" products.
How is only allowing "natural" pesticides not appealing to the naturalistic fallacy? If you really care about improving ecosystems, you should be using the best knowledge and techniques available.
> Modern pesticides are creating resistant weeds, such that now farmers who rely on chemistry to control the competitor organisms are finding weeds that are resistant to glyphosate and gluphosinate in their fields.
You'd be overgeneralising to say every modern pesticide had this problem though.
Because “what is best” is not always obvious, especially when something is relatively new. Pesticides in general are prohibited, and if the conditions for an exception are met, then the criteria for selecting a pesticide are that it based on precaution. It’s not that “natural stuff is ok and synthetics are not” otherwise the organic program would permit natural substances such as rotenone that have been shown to be harmful. The perspective is that synthetic substances are also subject to the precautionary principle, and should be studied to determine the safety and efficacy before they are permitted. Much of what we call “organic” is just “the way things were routinely done before the invention of selective herbicides” and when credible concerns about those substances and practices were raised, the rules were changed to reflect that understanding.
>You'd be overgeneralising to say every modern pesticide had this problem though.
Agriculture is a broad field (!) and one can usually find exceptions somewhere to blanket statements.
Is there a reason why some selective herbicides wouldn’t create selective pressure and thereby select for weeds that are resistant to that substance? I think that’s how evolution works and that’s the basic mechanism here. You haven’t seen resistance for the newer substances simply because there hasn’t been enough time for resistance to develop.
Why is this not a problem for pesticides used in organic farming? Probably because pesticides used in organic farming are not selective which means they will damage/kill your crops as readily as they will competitor organisms. Modern herbicides are selective, which means they kill the weeds and leave your crops alone, because the crops have resistant traits. These resistant traits are the ones that evolve in the weeds.
Has anybody ever claimed that organic is science-based?
That’s not accurate in the United States. All the organic certifying bodies are required to apply the same rules.
>§205.501 General requirements for accreditation. (a) A private or governmental entity accredited as a certifying agent under this subpart must:
(1) Have sufficient expertise in organic production or handling techniques to fully comply with and implement the terms and conditions of the organic certification program established under the Act and the regulations in this part;
(2) Demonstrate the ability to fully comply with the requirements for accreditation set forth in this subpart;
(3) Carry out the provisions of the Act and the regulations in this part, including the provisions of §§205.402 through 205.406 and §205.670;
[0]https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=d2567878d0b94a88ef...
In this context the world has no relation at all to its original meaning, it cannot possibly be concisely defined, as the only way to define it is with an exhaustive set of rules and regulations, and has no consistent meaning, because you can only talk about it in the context of the rules and regulations defined by one of many organisations at a time.
It’s not “hundreds of pages” as you originally claimed, and the interpretation does not vary substantially among certification bodies, as you implied.
Supposing arguendo that there are major differences between the definitions in the US, EU, and elsewhere, perhaps that is a feature, not a bug. Many other regulations are different from country to country, and to some degree that’s the point of having different countries. Can you explain what the problem is?
>In this context the world has no relation at all to its original meaning, it cannot possibly be concisely defined, as the only way to define it is with an exhaustive set of rules and regulations, and has no consistent meaning, because you can only talk about it in the context of the rules and regulations defined by one of many organisations at a time.
The modern world (to include agricultural technology) is indeed complex and consequently the laws reflect that. It’s not that difficult for the professionals to understand the details, and while I agree that the handful of pages of regulations are a bit too much for the average consumer, that’s the point of distilling them to a few principles and a regulated label. This way the consumer doesn’t need to decipher fine print on every label if they want to be cautious and environmentally responsible with their purchases.
Do you have an alternative to the current system to suggest? As it stands it’s pretty good for everyone. Firms that want to use modern biotech are able to do so, firms that want to hew a more cautious course are able to pursue organic certification, and consumers have a variety of products to choose from without being overburdened by complexity in an unfamiliar domain. There’s always room for improvement, can you suggest a way to improve this system without disrupting things for all the current stakeholders (consumers, biotech producers, and organic producers)?
The regulation itself is about 60 pages, and references numerous other regulations itself. It most certainly adds up to hundreds of pages of regulation. Not that that changes anything, usage of the word in this way still precludes the possibility of any sort of concise definition.
> and the interpretation does not vary substantially among certification bodies, as you implied.
Then why are inter-jurisdiction equivalence programs so complex? Typically only including a short list of equivalent countries, with all other imports requiring recertification. Oh, except with USDA Organic. That doesn’t have an equivalence program.
> Do you have an alternative to the current system to suggest?
Come up with a label that doesn’t unduly prejudice consumers, and doesn’t strip another word of its meaning. The word organic did used to have a very clear meaning before “organic” farming came about. If you were to ask an average consumer whether they knew their organic food was allowed to be treated with chemical pesticides and synthetic opioid painkillers, I bet they’d be pretty surprised by that.
GDPR is a complex set of regulations. People understand this when they talk about it, even if they don’t understand all of the rules. Thankfully it’s not called Privacy Certified, with a restriction preventing any non-certified business from using the word “privacy” to describe their product.
Most of those references are to other parts of the same document. As I said before, the world is complex, biotechnology is complex, and agriculture is complex. If you have any suggestions on what parts of the 60-odd pages are unnecessary or superfluous, feel free to share.
>Then why are inter-jurisdiction equivalence programs so complex? Typically only including a short list of equivalent countries, with all other imports requiring recertification. Oh, except with USDA Organic. That doesn’t have an equivalence program.
The US does, in fact, have an equivalency program with the EU. [0] earlier you claimed that certification bodies had different, unique definitions. That’s not true. Why is it complicated to meet the standards from different countries? Because you’re meeting standards from different countries, stuff has to be legal to produce, legal to export, legal to ship, legal to import, and legal to sell. Lots of people think there is too much regulation in the modern world, perhaps you are one of them, can you suggest something constructive that meets the goals of the program?
>Come up with a label that doesn’t unduly prejudice consumers
Can you show that consumers are unduly prejudiced by the current system?
>and doesn’t strip another word of its meaning. The word organic did used to have a very clear meaning before “organic” farming came about.
“Organic” had several clear meanings and has not lost any, however it has gained another clear meaning and people who use it don’t seem to see a problem.
>If you were to ask an average consumer whether they knew their organic food was allowed to be treated with chemical pesticides and synthetic opioid painkillers, I bet they’d be pretty surprised by that.
In general, they would be right to be surprised about the chemical pesticide and the synthetic opioid because 1) pests are systematically controlled with non-chemical means and 2) chemical pesticides and synthetic opioids are only permitted to be used as a last resort, when other means of controlling pesticides and ensuring the health and welfare of animals are found to be insufficient. Organic farmers are not permitted to routinely dope up their cattle or spray their crops. [1]
>GDPR is a complex set of regulations. People understand this when they talk about it, even if they don’t understand all of the rules. Thankfully it’s not called Privacy Certified, with a restriction preventing any non-certified business from using the word “privacy” to describe their product.
If people were generally mistaken about the way organic food is produced, I could agree with you that there was a problem. However most of the misinformation I see comes from people who are critical of the organic food program. I agree that the term isn’t perfect, I had a person tell me “there’s no difference between organic and inorganic food” and that was funny. But since there’s not really any such thing as “inorganic food” I’m still not sure what problem you see with the term. It’s not as though consumers of organic food are confused about the general principles. They buy organic food because they want to minimize their exposure to pesticides and to minimize their impact on the environment[2], organic regulations are written in order to achieve this goal while still permitting the producers to stay in business. If you want to criticize the organic program because it’s not strict enough when it comes to limiting these substances, that’s fine. But it already requires that the farmers use these substances as a last resort when other methods have failed, and the evidence suggests that it’s effective at achieving the goals, at least to some degree. [3]
[0]https://www.usda-eu.org/trade-with-the-eu/trade-agreements/u...
[1]https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=f1419426e5... (See §205.238 Livestock health care practice standard, part (b) and §205.206 Crop pest, weed, and disease management practice standard, entire section)
[2]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09503...
[3]https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/ehp.8418
[4]https://www.nature.com/articles/330370a0
[5]https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-...
Well putting aside the fact that the new meaning is anything but clear, this is just demonstrably untrue. There’s no such thing as an inorganic carrot, but you can not describe a carrot as being organic unless it is certified as such by the USDA (or whatever other certifying body), according to their unique criteria that have no relation at all to the carrots organicness.
> Can you show that consumers are unduly prejudiced by the current system?
Try googling a simple definition of “organic”. Google will tell you “produced or involving production without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or other artificial chemicals.” Everything about that definition is false according to any organic certification program (regardless of what you think an “artificial chemical” is...)
"Inorganic" is not a legally defined term with respect to agricultural goods, nor is it a scientifically meaningful term because carrots are made of organic materials (as "organic" is used scientifically). Thus, calling a food product "inorganic carrot" would either be fraudulent or deceptive under US and EU laws.
On the other hand, it is possible to have a "meat carrot" like Arby's did this summer, which consisted of carrot-shaped meat.
And it's certainly possible to have an iron carrot or a plastic carrot. Just not as a food product.
Context matters.
This unfortunately prevalent belief is extremely destructive. If people believe it must cost money to be environmentally friendly, then they will not be motivated to look for profit from actions that have a net positive impact on the environment. And that means the entire motivation to make money, which drives business and most of the economy, is largely absent from the range of serious problems we label as "environmental".
Luckily some people (like the ones in this article) see through this myth to find profit from this collective blind spot.
Is mostly true though. Efficient market hypothesis and all, rational people are unsustainable because they view it as the best (economic) choice.[1] As a rule any deviation from the market optimum, in this case towards 'sustainability' will introduce inefficiencies and make things more expensive, even adjusting e.g. taxes to correctly account for externalities will make items more expensive (but make the system more efficient as a whole).
[1]They of course may be wrong.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/04/13043...
>Green labeling causes some consumers to shun energy-efficient light bulbs even when they know the choice could save them money, a new study finds.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/05/business/energy-environme...
>“Why don’t you go live in Sweden and get the heck out of our country,” Mr. Blue wrote.” I will continue to roll coal anytime I feel like and fog your stupid eco-cars.”
Good grace. Maybe the Soviets did have a point with reeducation camps. Sarcasm aside, we as societies desperately need to come up with ways to cope with such people. Being as dense as rocks isn't criminal, but harming others as a result of that should be severely punished (and same goes for antivaxxers and abstinence-only ideology).
Companies will not accept a carbon tax unless it is applied fairly.
Having the accounting in place increases trust in the fairness of the system. Also it will enable a more fertile ground for political discussion, as more information will be available.
Finally, if the problem is rephrased as "companies effectively receiving state-support to exploit the planet", it will make the problem more urgent.
That's what tariffs are for.
Taxing the externalities also suggests we know how to measure how bad they are in some quantitative way and it is commonly accepted knowledge that the political process can implement in a law. Both of those assumptions are incorrect.
I'm basically arguing for 'tax them because we don't like this specific type of pollution' rather than trying to generalise into vague language. The generalisation doesn't hold.
If we blanket banned fossil fuels tomorrow; there would be a few billion dollars in losses to the producers. That would be the ... I don't recall what the opposite of an externality is. Internality, say. The extrenalities would be the collapse of a bunch of things that depend on fossil fuels, like cheap transport.
Slightly pithier: fossil fuels currently have massive subsidies --- from all the people who pay for them! It's just that that isn't what `subsidy' is usually taken to mean.
If the cost of a sea level rise destroying a small island nation is a negative externality, then enabling population growth in a large city (without food riots) is a positive externality. An extrenality is just an impact that goes beyond the immediate buyer and seller; most of the value chain is an externality to a fossil fuel provider who was to be targeted by this hypothetical tax.
The argument in essence is that cheap abundant energy always has a bigger positive impact than a first order approximation would suggest. Pretty much the entire industrial revolution was a long chain of "wow, coal is enabling stuff we never imagined" that was certainly not value being directly captured in the buying and selling the miners were doing. The oil & coal companies aren't capturing very much of the value vs what is created.
I mean, seriously, nobody can argue that fossil fuels haven't enabled civilisation to move from the 1800s to 2019. In a very practical sense they are the enabler of everything we have; there wouldn't be any positive externalities without them. Fossil fuels, crops, wood, iron & a few other metals are the setup materials for all of it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Economic_and_env...
My line is that we should either use the cheapest energy (before any government efforts to pick a winner) or nuclear as the most technically excellent energy source.
So far, that doesn't seem to be more than an assertion!?
> People should find a better one.
So ... because people supposedly justify taxing only the negative externalities by claiming that they are taxing all externalities, they should find a better justification for taxing only the negative externalities (but keep ignoring the positive externalities)?
> We've never used fossil fuels because people have a political love of fossil fuels;
Another assertion?
> we use them because they enable great works.
So? How is this rather uncontroversial statement relevant to the question of whether taxing externalities is a good idea and of whether positive externalities are being and/or should be considered when doing so?
> My line is that we should either use the cheapest energy (before any government efforts to pick a winner)
Does that translate into plain English as "we should ignore all costs that third parties have to pay when determining which energy source is the cheapest"? And if so, would you also say that, say, industry in general should use the cheapest materials and the cheapest equipment, where we also ignore all the costs that third parties have to pay when determining which materials and equipment are cheapest (such as healthcare costs for poisoned/injured/disabled workers or people living close to the factories ...)? Because workplace safety standards or environmental protections are "the government picking a winner"?
> or nuclear as the most technically excellent energy source.
So ... you suggest that we should use the cheapest source, except for nuclear, which we should use regardless whether it is the cheapesst, because you have decided that it is the most technically excellent energy source?
> it includes costs but not benefits
This is completely illogical because the benefits have always been included and nothing can change that other than a complete ban of fossil fuels.
We're on track for 4-6 degrees of warming over the next century, and nothing says it will stop there. Fossil fuel based civilization is all for naught. There is no "outrageous amount of good", quite the opposite. Every benefit is trivial when held up against the disaster we are creating.
Before fossil fuels we were able to go hundreds of thousands of years without crashing the earth's life support systems.
Notions of good and evil change dramatically when you internalize the full scope of the climate emergency.
Even if all the people supplying me with stuff were allowed to use fossil fuels, my lifestyle would still crater. I benefit hugely from being in a world where everyone around me has cheap access to energy.
My purchasing decisions are not responsible for the advanced and comfortable world I live in - which happens to be built on coal, oil and gas. I must be benefiting from externalities from fossil fuels.
Your thought experiment about banning fossil fuels doesn't tell us anything about externalities. An externality is when part of the cost or benefit of a thing is borne by someone with no control over it. This is bad because it means that the market will produce an amount of usage that isn't optimal. If the net externalities are negative, the market will use too much. If they're positive, the market will not use enough.
The fact that a blanket ban would leave you worse off only tells us that the optimal amount of fossil fuel usage isn't zero and that the current amount of usage is better. It doesn't tell us whether current usage is optimal or, if non-optimal, whether it's too high or too low.
For an example of something with positive externalities, consider public roads. Consider the road between me and the local grocery store. This road benefits me and the store. If I were responsible for building and maintaining it, I'd probably make it a minimal one-lane dirt track, because that would suffice for me, and the added expense of more lanes and more durable surface wouldn't pay off for me. But thousands of other people benefit from this road as well, and the total benefit to everyone makes it well worth building a wider, paved road. Left purely to the market, that road would be a narrow dirt track. Thankfully, the government steps in and builds a proper road, then captures the positive externality through taxes.
Another way to handle it would be to make it a private road and charge everyone for access. Transaction costs make this impractical, but if we could handwave those away and have efficient micro-transactions for road usage, that would get rid of the positive externality and give us efficient road use and construction without government intervention.
There's nothing like this for fossil fuels. People pay for the stuff based on how much they use. Other people pay those people based on the benefit they bring. The benefits are already captured. Subsidizing fossil fuels would increase the amount that gets used, which would be farther from the optimal usage than where we are currently. We currently use fossil fuels at a level above the optimal, because individuals deciding how much fuel to use aren't bearing the full costs of using it.
There's no indication that anything like that is at play with fossil fuels.
Ideally you want to return the collected tax money back into the economy through a general tax cut/subsidy. This way you incentivize good behaviour (carbon emission minimization) but limit impact on the economy. Most economists favour this approach.
The problem is environmentalist and progressives will not support this scheme because they would rather take the collected tax money and redirect it to their pet causes. This is what happend with Washington's Initiative 732 [1] - and why ENVIRONMENTAL groups brought it down (because fuck helping the environment if socialism doesn't come along for the ride)
There is insanity going on in progressive circles that is completely detrimental to fighting climate change that dwarfs conservative denialism.
Worse, once you start relying on this revenue, and this revenue goes down (as people use less carbon) - you're going to get yourself in trouble.
Maybe good economic policy should examine both ends of the wealth transfer: is it good that we take money from eg. big oil, and meanwhile also good that we put the money in the govt. budget? But most political talking points are one sided: “X should pay” or “Y should get paid.”
You return the fee directly back to the people. In fact there’s a bill in Congress proposing exactly that and it’s overwhelming supported by progressives.
If I rear your car I have to pay the damage. If I pollute air, land and oceans... it's free.
People even dismiss the idea with "pollution is inevitable".
(A permit auction does not suffer from these problems)
This belief is borne out somewhat when you visit a supermarket. Products labelled 'green' are often more expensive than 'non-green' products. Is it mostly 'green-washing'? I don't know but it does reinforce the belief that 'green' products command a premium price. Example brands that fit this perception: Ecover or Method.
As far as organic fruit and vegetables go, the cost of these varies in the UK depending on the produce. Organic mushrooms are often the same price as non-organic mushrooms in many supermarkets. Some organic produce can be a little bit more expensive (e.g. onions) and other produce can be twice as expensive as non-organic (e.g. leeks). But being non-organic doesn't mean unsustainable.
"Instead of buying pesticides and artificial fertilisers, they have invested heavily in labour and technology."
"They hadn’t increased the cost of making wine as they shifted to organic practice"
Same with the auto manufacturer; they didn't cut energy costs for the marketing, they did it because the energy costs made spending for the upgrade worth it.
Internalize the externalities and our system becomes sane.
Once a company has a proven and better solution, immediately has a competitive advantage over the rest in the industry. Why bother telling them how to get a 18% sustainable increase of your yield?
Try and take advantage as much and as far as you can, try to get far ahead, and enjoy the ride. And once the rest figure out what you've done, you have already matured and getting ready for leap #3 while they are still trying the leap #1.
Oh huh! Did you read the article?
> It refused, not because the innovations were trade secrets, or because it risked losing a cost-saving competitive edge (due to cheap electricity prices, the cost saving amounted to less than 1%)
The figure is doubly misleading:
* In a low margin business, 1% cost savings could easily be hugely increased profits. Toyota's profit is about 6% at the moment: changing to 7% would be significant. Many businesses have lower margins.
* "Less than 1%" is anywhere between 0% and 1%.
I would guess similar savings are being made by other manufacturers.
> It explicitly lists this as a point when providing examples of incorrect reasons "why industry is going green on the quiet."
> It refused, not because the innovations were trade secrets, or because it risked losing a cost-saving competitive edge (due to cheap electricity prices, the cost saving amounted to less than 1%)
that is what I was referencing.
"There are other reasons why manufacturers keep quiet about their sustainable practices. After 15 years of dedicated effort, a well-known car manufacturer reduced the amount of energy it took to make its cars by 75%: it can now make four cars using the same amount of energy it formerly took to make one. Evans was amazed when he discovered this while working with the manufacturer and asked if he could tell the world. It refused, not because the innovations were trade secrets, or because it risked losing a cost-saving competitive edge (due to cheap electricity prices, the cost saving amounted to less than 1%), but because the management was worried that to flag one area of innovation in the business for praise might attract unwanted attention to parts of its operation that were less sustainable, potentially sparking accusations of “green-washing”."
As an aside, it's funny how tiny these 'articles' are. I wonder to what extent cell phones have made people unlikely to read a anything more than a few paragraphs long.
E.g. Oatly's label but more independent and widespread https://www.oatly.com/uk/climate-footprint
Doesn't this just make sense? Companies that are innovative in one dimension of their business should be expected to be innovative in other areas too, with a corresponding impact on the bottom line.
But from those who want to help the environment? That is a sad combination of tall poppy syndrome and perfect the enemy of the good.
1) most of these certifications come with large philosophical impact. You can’t choose to be a “social impact only” B Corp, for example, you have to go all in on their philosophy on waste management too.
2) by not publicizing you reserve the option to switch grades/practices if necessary in the future.
There's an existing body of knowledge and practice for regenerative agriculture, or even productive "food forests" that are ecologically harmonious and can supply the needs of billions (meaning we don't have to postulate mass starvation as a prerequisite of ecological food production.) (One school is called Permaculture (a portmanteau of PERMAnent agriCULTURE).)
If you're doing this right there is an increase in quality and yield and a decrease in cost.
But yeah, a lot of people don't get this.
There was a question the other day, "Does regenerative agriculture scale?"
Well, yes, of course it does, the clue is in the name.
Search on "Geoff Lawton Greening the Desert" for living examples of converting barren desert into flourishing farms. Each farm is then capable of supplying not only produce and meat but also the materials to perform the same transformation at another site. Obviously, this is exponential growth.
There is a way, we must have the will.
I don't know any conventional farmers, and I don't know anyone who has known one in thirty years, so I can't tell you what sucks up their time all day. But I've heard reports it's a second job to keep the farm solvent. In a way, restoration agriculture is asking them to double down on the farm and hope it's profitable.
One of the louder voices in this space is known for compartmentalizing his operation by starting tons of LLCs that collaborate. He really enjoys that sort of thing (or it makes him feel safe) but this is a lot of responsibility on a few shoulders.
I don't think the import of what he's done will be appreciated until either his kid get old enough to take over from Pops, or he files bankruptcy for one of these LLCs due to an accident or a product recall.
This sentence doesn't seem to be supported by the sentence before it, unless there's an assumption that slower and more old-fashioned methods produce higher quality products -- an assumption that seems questionable, at least.
This “guilt” you think someone is trying to lay on you? Yeah, that’s in your head, too. No one actually said that.
20 years ago, it was impossible to monitor your crops with drones and sensors and software. All you could do was dust it with pesticides band fertilizer and hope. Now that we have a better alternative, people use that.
It's not about being "sustainable", it's just what makes financial sense. That winery now needs to buy less fertilizer and gets a better yeild.
In practice worse pesticides and fertilizer imply that huge quantities are used still yielding less per square meter.
They do not, in fact it is a last resort.
[0]https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=94361624bc8858349d...
The difference is that there are no restrictions regarding the use of 1) synthetic pesticides 2) man-made fertilizers, 3) GMOs and 4) antibiotics.
So Integrated Farming is just like Organic Farming, but without the bullshit.
Whether you prefer the flavour, or think the restrictions of organic are necessary or not, or don't go far enough are another matter.
Those production and husbandry standards aren't always quite what we expect them to be. You should see how "free range" chickens are raised. Australian farmers who actually care about the welfare of the chickens and the quality of the end product have been trying to create a new brand "pasture raised" or "pastured eggs" (in the case of eggs) because lobbying by the major producers watered down the standards to the point it's disgusting to see chicken feedlots where chooks are free to range at 10,000 hens per hectare.
Free range is marketed to imply old time farm yards with a few dozen hens happily pecking around some rural spacious idyll. The reality is depressingly different. Whether you care about organic aims at all, buying EU organic gets you the "most" free range eggs from best treated hens, that you can get at the supermarket. Which is more than a bit silly.
You won't be surprised to learn I'm in favour of much stronger regulation and definitions on food and production labelling. While we're at it, adding carbon impact to labels.
https://newfoodeconomy.org/organic-food-fraud-usda-doj-randy... This was a case just last month. $142 million in false organic grain over 7 years that was shipped as feed to animals later sold as organic.
Thankfully the EU is doing better, though that may well change markedly for the worse here in the UK after Brexit. Especially if the much mooted, and one-sided UK-US trade deal is made real, not just mythical rainbows and unicorns.
On the other hand, the amount of energy used to grow, process and distribute the product is likely to be higher than for non-organic due to less efficient fertilization, more cultivation, lower yields due to pests, and smaller-scale production units.
What about the presumption is wrong?
Also https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/organic-labeling-s...
“Organic”
“Organic” can be used to label any product that contains a minimum of 95 percent organic ingredients (excluding salt and water). Up to 5 percent of the ingredients may be nonorganic agricultural products that are not commercially available as organic and/or nonagricultural products that are on the National List.1
Principal display panel: May include USDA organic seal and/or organic claim.
Information Panel: Must identify organic ingredients (e.g., organic dill) or via asterisk or other mark.
Everything?
You quote a bunch of resources, and none of them support the presumption you made "lower amounts of pesticide and herbicide residues in the product, hence some tiny lessening of the probability of getting cancer. Some would also assert that the products have better nutritional values". The presumption is understandable, intuitive, but has no basis in reality.
The presumption seems to be that organic farming is closer to traditional farming and avoids practices that pollute the products and the environment. However, the government doesn't see it that way, and describes (in the resources you quote) "organic" in a way that does not require to avoid polluting practices as such, but only certain types of polluting practices... while farmers/manufacturers (obviously) compensate for them.
In particular, if we're talking about produce, then the large growers who want to satisfy the USDA Organic Label criteria of "Produce can be called organic if it’s certified to have grown on soil that had no prohibited substances applied for three years prior to harvest. Prohibited substances include most synthetic fertilizers and pesticides." achieve that by using nonsynthetic fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides in large quantities (as they're less efficient as the "default" materials). The substances replacing standard synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are not safer for humans, they're not safer for the environment, they're simply "more natural" because of arbitrary criteria.
While an organic farmer could make produce with less pesticides, that's not cost efficient, so on average mass-produced organic produce that meets all the USDA Organic Label requirements generally has more harmful herbicide and nitrate residues than the "default" non-organic produce. A friend works in food safety testing labs, and most of products that exceed the allowed limits of various unhealthy substances or are near the limits come from certified organic farms.
Citation needed.
In fact, the organic program requires farmers to manage the weeds and insects using methods besides pesticides, and only allows non-routine pesticide use in the exceptional case.
>friend works in food safety testing labs, and most of products that exceed the allowed limits of various unhealthy substances or are near the limits come from certified organic farms.
This is likely due to contamination and fraud, since the letter and the spirit of the law in the United States do not permit routine use of pesticides of any type.
All that said, our current practices and facilities cannot recycle or produce enough non-fossil fuel fertilizer to support or agricultural practices.
In order to produce fertilizer renewably in an artificial way, ie draw it from the air and water in a chemical facility, we need to increase our energy usage in making fertilizer 10x or more over. Which essentially means we need near the current entire world's worth of energy production produced again, renewably, for the sole production of fertilizer.
The first time I noticed that was ten or 15 years ago when some 20-something on a train ride were complaining about how the green party was everywhere (they had just peaked at 15% in the previous election) and how soon we'll be obliged to eat green, to drink green coke, that everything is going to be organic, etc.
It was a weird mix of "i don't want to admit they are right so let just say anything bad about them" and... I don't know what. They are people in my work circle who voted for the far-right because they were "fed up with the climate campaign" (referring to the recent climate demonstrations). Like they would hold to any position to justify their own actions.
"It's the fault of environmental activists if we don't go green because they scared us too much and we didn't listen to them."
I think I see the same pattern in the anti organic arguments.
edit: Also, "they are making me feel guilty, so they are bad and manipulative". Sorry, there isn't much coherence to my post. Just my feelings.
A reasonable response to those takes is "but this take on things happens to be true". That's fair, however that's the premise of the defense of basically every belief system.
IMHO such flagrant and destructive distortion of truth, especially with such an existential threat as Climate Change is, deserves some criminal charge on the order of Crimes Against Humanity. I've been watching this charade play out from inside Republican ranks for decades and whole thing makes me sick to my stomach.
That is, "They" and "Their" base instincts, ignorance, greed, and lies are also to blame when other belief systems are unpopular or misunderstood.
If the goal is to rile up believers, jeremiads tend to work well enough. But building a case to prosecute does not create repentance.
But it isn't, at least not for these people. The core of the right doesn't contemplate a world beyond their own lifespans. They, trump especially, are surprised when they travel to see other world leaders talking about things decades in the future. Monarchs of ages past thought about securing their kingdoms for their future descendants. Our monarchs don't think beyond the next election cycle. The longest span of time contemplated in US right-wing politics is how long a supreme court justice might live. Everything beyond that is totally irrelevant.
You can't defeat that in the long-term by voting the other party in because the nature of the two party system is that each party is in power half the time. The only way to fix it is to reform the Republican platform so that it's one of the issues both parties agree on rather than every administration just undoing whatever the previous one did.
> Perfect example is when global warming was rebranded to climate change, largely by the Right, after which right-leaning politicians have spent every moment saying "See they had to change it from warming to change! They clearly don't know what they're talking about."
Propaganda is propaganda. When it was called global warming they would claim that some places were getting cooler rather than warmer (due to changes in ocean and wind patterns etc.), which was true but not actually any better. If some places get drier and some places get wetter, well, droughts and floods are both bad. More to the point, the ecosystem in each place is calibrated for the previous climate and rapid changes start causing things to go extinct regardless of the direction of the local changes.
But that takes longer to explain than a talking point about how some places are getting cooler and not warmer or any of the other irrelevant nonsense about how temperatures decline every year during the period between summer and winter. Calling it climate change was an attempt to defend against that nonsense, so naturally the industry now spends all day claiming that rhetorical defeat as a victory because that's what propagandists do.
Pitting both sides against each other is how corporations get what they want. The enemy is Exxon, not the people of the state of Nebraska.
It came from academics who realized that saying "global warming" was confusing to people when the climate swung wildly from unusually hot to unusually cold. It takes some time and a willing listener to explain that "warming" means increased energy in the climate system, and therefore more dramatic swings between hot and cold weather.
Saying "global warming" also does nothing to communicate things like change in precipitation patterns.
Using the phrase "climate change" does a much better job of encompassing these phenomenon.
I share your sentiment. I used to be active in a local food buyer group (7-15 people getting together to collect vegetables and food from local producers) and I saw how to the tribe factor plays a huge role in one's allegiance and political stance.
Basically, people gather to be together. The end goal was second to that. Buying local or organic food ? No brainer. Joining the Sunday demonstration against the nuclear plant ? No room for debate. It's assumed everyone will go and it'll be friendly (almost in a kid way) and everyone is in it together. It's about the tribe and mutual reassurance (are we all friends ? are we all okay ?)
Scary thing is when you realize some people fall into the happy gang of buying fresh vegetables from the farm and spend an afternoon or two during summers tending to the crops with the farmer (and then have a nice bbq) but some people, because they were put in classroom A or B in elementary school or anything else really, end up roaming the street at night looking for troubles.
It's all really basic physiological needs: humans like to be together. The political (in the city sense) reasons for that often seem to come second.
So, yes, the exterior signs of belonging to a group have to be defended. And the online discourse make it looks like everyone is a hard-liner and conversations get hot real quick.
It's like the vegan thing on Imgur. I know some hard core vegan. None of them are anything like the straw men I see, the made up extremist version of vegans, being derided on the front page.
There's one guy in my facebook friends who can't let two days past without posting something along the lines of "do vegans think of mama carrot when they eat baby carrots ?". I counter joked once that he must have been bitten by a lettuce or his parents forced him to eat his soup too many times when he was a kid to hold such grudges against vegans.
Now on the other hand I have another friend in the first stage of veganism that can't let two days go without posting outrage cryporn about the beef or chicken industry.
So. They all clash. Social networks are social status validators and all the tribes are mixing in but their core values aren't compatible.
Sorry, I am rambling.
Unfortunately, it gets even harder.
Scene: Bloomington, IN Saturday city farmers market.
A vendor named "Schooner Creek Farms" was outed by an FBI informant and a hacktivist collective that the owners were Identify Evropa. Because the market is run by the city, the city refuses (or has no cause to) throw them out.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/farmers-markets-have-new-unwel...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/18/us/indiana-farmers-market...
Even worse, there was a spraypaint attack on a church locally. Swastikas, and the like were some of the things done. Turns out, one of the 2 white males worked at the local co-op food market. The co-op runs their own 'Nazi-free farmers market' sinice the city is unable/unwilling to eject Schooner Creek Farms.
This whole situation is still ongoing. We had last week the head of Identify Evropa, now called "American Identitarian Movement", make a presence and buy produce in support. It's pretty terrible, with no end in sight.
But yeah, even organic veggies have significant politics enmeshed - and sometimes those politics are ones that nobody in their right mind would ever buy from had they know. I know I bought unwillingly from them.
There's organic and then there's organic.
Moving to carbon-neutral methods and creating processes which are sustainable or actively improve the world? Great. We need to be doing that.
Eating food labelled as "Organic" and shunning GMOs as if they were actively toxic? No. That's bullshit and actively harming the legitimacy Greens have. It's barely a step above pushing "detox" and thinking chemtrails are a thing.
Green should be about using the best current scientific knowledge to improve the world, not thinking science is actively harmful and rejecting it in favor of crap that makes you feel better. Ceding the intellectual high ground to people who crack jokes about Al Gore every time someone mentions that the Arctic is melting is the exact opposite of a good idea.
Some things that certain greens push are ridiculous, many are not.
Ridiculous include:
- rage against nuclear power
- rage against GMO
- rage against pesticides that are better than alternatives
- trying to force everyone to go vegan
Non ridiculous include:
- blocking road building projects through nature preserve
- trying to convince others to reduce their carbon and energy footprint
- promoting renewable energy and electric cars
- trying to save bees
- outcry against oil spills and burning off gas from oil wells
- increasing awareness of climate change
- getting people to eat more vegetables and local foods
- fighting for unpolluted water
Irrelevant include:
- strains of antiglobalism
AGW is real. Clean coal is a contradiction in terms. GMOs are largely a good thing. "Organic" food (that is, food labeled "Organic") is no better than the alternatives, and potentially worse in some ways. Nuclear power is potentially a very good thing, but there are so many possible reactor designs and waste strategies it's impossible to make a blanket statement. Homeopathy and chiropractic and alternative medicine are all outright shit, and Reiki is such shit it doesn't deserve to be taken seriously enough to be debunked.
If you can't distinguish me from the "Global warming? AL GORE! HAW HAW HAW!" crowd now, you really need to do some re-calibration.
These are also issues around patented seeds, and soil degredation that organic producers tend to be better at, even if it's not technically what organic means...
Unlike most of the vague or meaningless standards, care and production labelling and logos, Organic is a legally defined and enforced standard. It may be a weaker standard in the US compared to the EU, but it's a definite marker wherever you are.
Most of the organic production results in far better animal treatment, and lower carbon methods than conventional agriculture, and tries to create processes that are sustainable. Unsurprisingly it's not perfect.
If I want the most animal friendly meat rearing standards, the "most free range" free range eggs - with more space and better conditions than those labelled free range(!), most grass fed dairy cows, most sustainably produced veggies and so on, I should buy organically labelled. In the EU at least - there may be higher legally mandated standards of rearing elsewhere - though I think not. That's regardless whether or not I care about organic aims or dislike the rejection of GMO or some specific product or process.
If I buy conventionally produced I am reliant on non-binding marketing phrases and trust of the producers. Of which I have little.
Dismissing organic as illegitimate chemtrail bullshit that should be dismissed, when there is nothing better is incredibly counter productive. Far better to try and improve organic standards bodies to be a little less dogmatic about accepting new discoveries and processes that fit the sustainability aims, or to agitate for better mandated definitions, accepting GMOs on the precautionary principle of approval as the EU does for conventional use.
Where "precautionary principle" means not using them because people actively lie about how safe they are and then agitate to force labels on them. You might just as well label vaccines with WARNING: PROTEINS and then spread misinformation about how injecting proteins causes autism-cancer.
Precaution, taken on its own, is fine. In the context of GMOs, it means implicitly accepting a whole raft of lies.
Bullshit is the word. Some examples:
- Farmer #1 uses a plethora of organic pesticides on every crop. Can label produce as Certified Organic.
- Farmer #2 uses no pesticides whatsoever, with the exception of glyphosate once a year for weed control. Not Organic.
- Farmer #3 applies B. thuringiensis (Bt) innoculate for fighting fungal infections in corn. Compatible with Organic.
- Farmer #4 sows GM Bt corn that already has B. thuringiensis, with the added benefit of avoiding carbon emissions for using a tractor. Not Organic.
- Farmer #5 gives his free-ranging animals no antibiotics. In line with Organic practice.
- Farmer #6 gets paid regular visits by a certified veterinary, that prescribes antibiotics when strictly necessary. Not Organic.
Duh I meant fighting insects. B. thuringiensis has nothing to do with fungi.
When it comes to food, if I see two products on the shelf that are identical except that one is labelled "50% less salt" or "lite", I immediately come to the inclusion that the "healthier" one compromises taste for healthiness, leading me to select the "regular" product. Because why have two separate products otherwise?
Experience has definitely confirmed this for me. "Lite" pancake syrup (not maple) tastes noticeably worse than the regular stuff, and anything gluten-free that normally contains gluten, like bread, is typically disgusting in comparison to the normal product. (On the other hand, Cheerios cereal became gluten-free simply by changing the manufacturing or growing process to avoid cross-contamination, and that didn't bother me.)
It seems like this perception of green hasn't caught up with reality yet. This also explains the (worry about) accusations of green-washing. If a company announces some green improvement in their products, people read that as virtue signaling. Then, when it comes out the company has not made green sacrifices elsewhere, that is seen as not virtuous. Problem is, their announcement was not 'we are making sacrifices to be green' but 'we made improvements that are green'. But that is not how people read such announcements.