You're viewing a single thread.
I've been pleasantly surprised at how Canadian my stuff already is. It makes sense, I guess - shipping costs something, and I look for deals.
The really hard thing will be fresh, perishable goods, so I've spent the last several years moving onto all-pantry recipes. Detergent is also weirdly American, although Tru Earth is Canadian.
Unfortunately, shipping is insanely cheap. That's why to make a T-shirt you get cotton grown in Egypt, shipped by a huge container ship to Indonesia where it is turned into cotton yarn. That yarn is then loaded back onto a huge container ship where it goes to Bangladesh to be turned into a T-shirt. Then, it's loaded onto a huge container ship to be sent to the US for people to buy. All that shipping only adds $2 to the total cost of $12 or so, and then it's sold for like $20.
Depends on weight, too. Textiles are really light per value (and if it's Egyptian cotton maybe this is a nice shirt, even). A can of potatoes is quite different in that respect.
But yeah, shipping is still reasonably cheap. Which is good - not everything can be made in Canada, or like textiles made here at reasonable cost, and it gives us the option to not use the US as long as our ports have enough capacity.
It's good that shipping is cheap in some ways. The problem is that it's cheap because it uses the absolute worst kinds of fuels that are incredibly polluting. The fact that shipping is incredibly cheap is a major reason why the climate is changing.
Hmm. I actually doubt that's true at this point, except for aircraft. The thing is you can't convert everything to EVs overnight.
You doubt what's true? That transportation / shipping is a major contributor to climate change?
"the transportation sector contributes 20.2% of global CO2 emissions"
International cargo container shipping is only about 2% of global CO2, but that's still 10% of all transportation-related output coming from shipping alone. Imagine if every 1 in 10 vehicles you saw on the road was a little boat, that's how much international shipping contributes to CO2.
You shouldn't convert everything to EVs overnight. EVs aren't the answer, public transport and alternative transport like biking is the answer. A nasty deisel-based bus almost certainly contributes less to climate change than 30 personal EVs, especially if you consider the entire life cycle.
Transport is going to be the hardest thing to convert to not use fossil fuels, because the biggest advantage of fossil fuels is the massive energy density of the fuel. An EV has to lug massive batteries around with it everywhere it goes, but a gasoline car just needs a relatively small fuel tank. For small personal vehicles it might be possible to accept the compromise, but it's going to be a lot harder to get rid of fossil fuels for buses, trains and especially airplanes and ships. So, the answer there is not to switch to EVs, it's to reduce the use as much as possible. Stop flying around the world. Stop ordering things from overseas. Stop driving personal vehicles and take public transit.
Right now, the biggest sector contributing to global CO2 is electricity and heat production, but solar and wind are getting so cheap that it's just a matter of time for those to be converted. You don't even need to give incentives, the cheapest solution is now the cleanest. The energy density of the fuel doesn't matter in those cases. But, transport's going to be a harder problem, and it's the one we should be working on now.
You doubt what’s true? That transportation / shipping is a major contributor to climate change?
No. That it can't be done without emissions.
EVs aren’t the answer, public transport and alternative transport like biking is the answer.
Biking and public transit for cargo?