Trying to figure out whether local produce is more environmentally sound than stuff brought in from hundreds or thousands of miles away?
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David Reevely
By day, I'm an editor and sometime writer for the Ottawa Citizen. By night, as a personal project, I write here, working out how to be a libertarian and an environmentalist at the same time. Tips, comments, and corrections eagerly accepted in the comments, or by e-mail.This site’s feed
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This reminds me of the point a voter made to me when I was campaigning: flourescent light bulbs do waste 80% of their energy as heat compared to incandescents, but in Canada, for most of the year, that heat is USEFUL in a house 🙂
Actually, having typed that, I think I see the fallacy, since electricity is an inefficient way to generate heat..
These eco-calculations are not simple, and we have to avoid black-vs-white arguments.
You’re right about the inefficiency, of course, plus there’s the part of the year when the heat is a giant pain in the arse and chances are you have another electrical cooling device battling it out with your incandescents to try to keep the place comfortable.