Buying locally, but not in winter and not if it requires driving to more stores

We've all heard that buying locally-grown produce is better for the environment because of the fuel consumed to transport goods, but that isn't always the case. If you can buy locally-grown tomatoes in the middle of winter, it's likely because they've been grown in heated greenhouses over several weeks, which is far worse in terms of carbon emissions than buying tomatoes that have been transported from another country where they were grown without artificial heating. Indeed, the environmental impact of transportation is typically a drop in the ocean compared to the many different resources that go into producing our food. These resources will include the energy consumed to make it possible to grow crops in areas and seasons that are colder or drier than where they naturally grow, but also processing of food into more complex products like chocolate bars and ready-meals. As a general rule, the more processing involved, the more energy required, and this is a far more important factor to attend to in the supermarket aisle than whether something is produced locally.

The Extinction of Thoughtful People and Fearless Parrots

Around five percent of all the people who have ever lived are still alive. That's an astoundingly high proportion given that modern homo sapiens have been around for upwards of 150,000 years, and it speaks to just how steeply the world's population has increased within living memory.

This increase, along with the technological advances that made it possible, have fundamentally transformed our planet in a way that has obviously taken an enormous toll. We've cleared away habitats to make way for our agriculture, practically emptied the sea of fish, and begun to change our climate, but the pace of all this has been just slow enough for each new generation to grow up thinking it's always been this way, that our use of natural resources is normal so we can go on like this forever. But we clearly can't. The reality we are now living with, and have apparently been living with for the last century, is that the Earth is experiencing a mass extinction event on a scale not unlike the one that killed off the non-avian dinosaurs. Over the last century, vertebrate species have been disappearing at a pace that is conservatively estimated to be 114 times the background rate.

The Dalai Lama's Greeting Card Company

This patch addresses multiple issues with minds that are receptive to Dalai Lama quotes.

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama (Photo by Jan Michael Ihl via Flickr)

The Dalai Lama is an agreeable man with twinkly eyes, and obviously an inspiration to many people, but while I admire his emphasis on love and compassion, I don't typically find what he says about these subjects any more insightful than the philosophy found in an average greeting card. It's possible that I regularly miss the point of the things he says, but much of the time, he seems to be either rehashing age-old truisms that I can't imagine are news to anyone, or making statements that initially sound true and profound, but when you really dwell on the substance of them and follow them through to their logical conclusions have almost everything backwards.

I don't expect agreement about this from anyone who is not already of this opinion without looking at some examples, so let's look at a few of his most popular quotes. In each case, I'll try to interpret his meaning as charitably as I can, but you'll see the problems I get into. Along the way, I'll use the opportunity to discuss what I think are more instructive (and much more interesting) ways of thinking about the issues raised.