If there is an industry that should be strictly localized, it's this one.
> The work is grueling, with long shifts in steamy greenhouses, and laborers earn as little as $70 a month, but it’s a steady paycheck in a country where those can be hard to come by.
By comparison, that monthly wage of $70 is less than a day of minimum wage in the US. That's why it's more efficient to make a global energy-intensive cold chain logistics and air-freight network.
(That and the price of carbon pollution isn't priced into the supply chain)
That's the scale of globalization.
So there's that.
Welcome to civilisation. We do things than aren't survival focused.
But I do agree about local. I mean who doesn't want to walk by something like this everyday - https://scontent-yyz1-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t50.2886-16/93565...
Depends on your definition of essential, I'd argue 100% of the world population would survive just fine without music or flowers. Food is essential, water is essential, medicine is essential, shelter is essential. Some tulips imported for 2000km away aren't. I mean, do we really have to debate this ?
If we go there, sooner or later, someone will show up and say Ketchup is essential.
Few things are “essential”. But that’s hardly the point.
Anyways, is love essential?
No they wouldn't, they'd get depressed and eventually become either withdrawn or violent. I'm not arguing for a wasteful and environmentally destructive flower trade, but against your notion that mere maintenance of the biological organism is sufficient. Universals like music and flowers serve an important role in social cohesion.
In my country garlands for hindu ceremonies are big business. I guess that is as essential as it gets for cut flowers. However, these largely depend on local suppliers.
The exporting surely is not essential.
I just hope society gradually moves to a state where everything but the most essential of essential stuff is produced and consumed.
Music is a great example. Sure we could do without it, but life is for the living. Experiences are not essential to the physical functions of life but without them life would quickly become depressing, at which point, what are we protecting?
How's about a jet airplane that runs on cut flower waste? taps head
But is spending irreplaceable fossil fuel energy on what are basically short-lived ornaments rational? I'd say no.
The skies in summer here are criss-crossed with dispersed contrails. It might help a little with global warming by increasing the reflectance of the atmosphere but it's sure ugly.
Surely solar power could help.
It' the same with people screaming why their country doesn't have their own PPE manufacturers; because in non-crisis times, the hospitals would buy from the lowest bidder, and those would be manufacturers with cheap developing country labor..
It is why the Fed specifically segregates "durable goods" in inflation, GDP, and price indexes.
I can understand the argument about money, economy, livelihood, etc., but IMHO some things ought to be regulated to avoid situations where a bunch of roses carry a non trivial amount of carbon footprint.
Wouldn't it be possible to use locally grown flowers?
Flowers like you say lasts a week for multiple people. Also unlike kitschy stuff you buy and just sits there forgotten, you appreciate them, you have to somewhat care for them, they add value to life.
To say they are "they are not essential" is saying life itself is not essential, just eat powder and sit in a room if this is the case.
I feel like what you are saying is you don't like flowers so no one else should.
And I really think it's callous for us to forget the "More than 150,000 people now toil on Kenyan flower farms, many of them women." These are the poorest of the poor, to take away what little they have is pretty thoughtless.
It sustains their life and thus serves an important purpose.
> Also unlike kitschy stuff you buy and just sits there forgotten, you appreciate them, you have to somewhat care for them, they add value to life.
Kitschy stuff is another ecological disaster, separately from cut flowers. People who appreciate flowers generally buy potted ones and care for them; cut plants are meant as gifts or decorations, and they get thrown away immediately (think of all the decorative flowers on social events) or after they wither (ain't nobody has time to care for the gift roses in the vase, or even notice them).
> I feel like what you are saying is you don't like flowers so no one else should.
I think GP is saying something else. They're taking a systems-level view. Flowers are cool, but we've created a system in which huge amount of energy is used to manufacture and ship around what amounts to reified mating signals, that could be manufactured and shipped locally instead. Now it would be fine in the era of free energy and matter replicators, but we're still in the era of scarcity and looming climate change. So it's fair to ask questions about unnecessary waste in the system.
Yes shipping and storage seem wasteful, but there are economies of scale involved when centralizing production to areas with the right climate, with desirable soil qualities, with expertise in planting such flowers, etc.
To help local flower growers win out, we would need to increase the cost of shipping/storage/etc. (maybe because we think they are not properly pricing in externalities?). Then we're back in the realm of tariffs and protectionism, which is its own can of worms; personally, I think we can complicate our understanding of free trade, and reasonably choose to impose artificial costs/penalties when it comes to climate protection or environmental goals (as opposed to, propping up certain industries just because they're better at lobbying).
Consider that, it is cheaper/more-efficient for fisherman/crabmen in Alaska or the PNW to send their catch to China for processing (filleting, canning, etc.), before shipping it back to the US for retail. I always found that to be fascinating, that supply chains are such that, it's more economical to outsource the processing of seafood, than for the fisherman to dump their catch to a local processing facility that then sends it out for retail.
I'm willing to bet that given the choice many of them would rather not engage in such toil, and the reason they're poor is because wages are kept so low that they have little opportunity to save enough to make such choices.
Nobody buys flowers because they are trying to better the lives of agricultural laborers. I always find myself doubting the sincerity of such appeals, which only seem to arise in discussions of externalities. Many years ago I worked at an industrial floristry company for about a year, doing the manual work of handling the flowers as they came in from abroad and putting them in storage or preparing them for sale. I liked the work OK but I didn't get up every day thinking 'thank heavens so many people love the flowers we sell.' The pay wasn't that great and when I found a better job I took it.
If we only live for the essentials, what do we live for?
Until society self adjusts, to minimize the total carbon emissions per capita to a sustainable level, we might have to do with only essentials.
Alternative framing: rather than thinking of it as "subsisting on the minimum essentials", how do you build a legacy that will continue to outlive you in perpetuity?
You cultivate something that is living and beautiful. Then you kill it, and bring the corpse inside, to essentially observe the once-living thing's decay.
(And don't get me started on giving cut flowers as gifts. If your host is an animal lover, you don't pick up roadkill on your way over, either.)
:-)
Human sacrifice has a long history. Though it was, as far as I'm aware, a rare and drastic thing to do. For example there were a few instances in classical Roman history when human slaves were sacrificed. This was done in very dire situations, think pandemic or important battle, and often in earlier Roman periods. It was also actually quite common in Aztec and Mayan, though in differing degrees. They didn't however use volcanoes
Also in these classical times human slavery was much more wide spread and accepted. It was a very different situation to modern and colonial slavery. Some examples of it being wide spread being helots in ancient Greece, and the slave economy of Rome. The influx of slaves in the gallic wars lead to the political upheaval that let Cesar come to power, with "cheap" labor taking work from Roman citizens.
To summarize, having flowers in a vase is completely normal, and likening it to slavery or human sacrifice is dumb. Also history is interesting!
Why?
> bizarre and grotesque custom
And comparing it to slavery?
For the record: I have never liked cut flowers as a concept, and even find flower vase the second most useless household item that one can own. But as to your snark, I actually DO refer to the high-pollen times as plant-orgy season. Not all the time, but often enough.
It all comes down to the "plants don't have feelings/aren't really alive" bias we have.
Some people will go to great contorted lengths to justify the destruction of something, using words like tradition, aesthetics or honor and justice (like for war) or just "the way it has always been", and if you try to call them out on it, they'll get angry at you for trying to stop them from destroying something (as seen in the other comments here) :)
I get your point, but it's also a reflection of your own psychological state. People mostly like flowers to bring some nature into their home; they could also cultivate houseplants, but that's a lot more work and if you try cultivating multiple plants together they are likely to either kill each other or attract bugs. The transience of flowers isn't inherently morbid, for the same reason you can be vegetarian but still wear woolen clothes.