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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  4233 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Against local food | MattBruenig | Politics

i wonder where geneusutwork found the site? ;)

anyways, i'm really disappointed in this article. the local food movement is not entirely about carbon.

bruening is pretty good sometimes but he has a frustrating habit of occasionally going after strawmen.





thenewgreen  ·  4233 days ago  ·  link  ·  

By bad, I ought to give credit where credit is due :)

As for Bruenig, the guy seems to be cranking out pieces and for that type of pace the writing is good and the topics are interesting. So, yeah... thanks to YOU for the introduction.

Aside: What I've noticed with blogs/bloggers is that either they take way too long between posts (ahem... cW and StJohn) but the writing is great, or they write often and the work is shoddy. It's nice to find one that can have a good pace and produce material I enjoy reading. I think theadvancedapes does a nice job of that. Any other suggestions?

user-inactivated  ·  4233 days ago  ·  link  ·  

a lot of the blogs i watch are very low-volume, i just make up for it by subbing lots of them in my aggregator.

i watch several other aggregation sites including reddit, hackernews, metafilter, and slashdot.

there's a few major blogs/magazines that post weekly "tl;dr" lists, and those are another major source of content for me.

anything that i might suggest, i certainly post, so just keep followin me ;)

thenewgreen  ·  4233 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I don't think he ever presents it as being "entirely about carbon." Here is the first sentence

    There is a movement of people who really want people to eat food that is produced locally. Their argument seems to be primarily about the environmental impacts of moving food long distances.
I think he has a point here. If you were to talk to a champion of the local food "movement" and ask them why it's important, I would guess this would be the first reason given. It's not the only drum they beat, but it's often the one that's beat on the loudest. -From my experience.
kleinbl00  ·  4232 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The first reason given would be environmental impact. The second reason given would be the local economy. the third reason given would be food security. And all of these reasons would be accompanied by attribution and further discussion. None of this "silly people, the thousand-mile caesar salad is good for CONSUMPTION! CONSUME CONSUME CONSUME!

b_b  ·  4233 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I wouldn't quite call it a strawman. Obviously, agriculture is very complex and multidimensional. GHG emissions are a very important aspect to consider when determining policy, but they're by no means the only aspect.

user-inactivated  ·  4233 days ago  ·  link  ·  

He presents the local food movement as solely focused on reducing carbon emissions from food transportation, which is certainly not the case.

If it's not a disingenuous strawman, it's at best a myopic failure.