Carbon Pricing Would Help With This
Grist has, alongside its environmental policy news and commentary, a running feature called “Ask Umbra” in which people ask for advice on ecologically responsible consumption. The answer almost invariably turns out to be “this hinges on an impossibly complicated set of considerations.” For example, is it better to buy frozen vegetables or steamed ones:
Grade A frozen foods are harvested when ripe and quickly taken to the freezing plant, where they are (even more quickly) flash frozen at extremely low temperatures. The modern industrial freezing process retains almost all the original nutritional value of the food (according to nutrition guru Marion Nestle’s helpful book What to Eat). Good to go on the nutrition angle. But it’s important to have an efficient freezer. One study using 1970s data found that the longer frozen foods sit in the freezer, i.e., are using energy in storage, the more they fall behind canned goods in the efficiency smackdown.
The canned goods are a bit less nutritious, but a study that looked closely at this issue found the differences between frozen and canned carrots to be insignificant. Carrots in syrup, or whatever they might put carrots in, would of course fall in to the category of dessert or a processed food, and cannot be favorably compared to fresh. As you know, the ecological issue with canned carrots is the steel can itself, which has high embodied energy costs. If a study assumes the recycling of the steel can, then canned vegetables can compete favorably with frozen vegetables on the sustainability index.
From a political perspective, this sort of thing underscores the need for collective action in the form of public policy that will put a price on greenhouse gas pollution. To realistically assess the total environmental impact of the choice between frozen carrots and canned carrots, you’d also want to know something about the land-use impact of your decisions, the transportation of the goods, the energy costs of keeping frozen food frozen in the supermarket, etc. You can’t really do this sort of thing through back-of-the-envelop calculations.
51 Responses to “Carbon Pricing Would Help With This”
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October 26th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
is it better to buy frozen vegetables or steamed ones[?]
By the time I finished reading this post, I understood that you meant “canned” where you wrote “steamed”. Matt, really, just read through each post once before putting it up. It’s like when you wrote “deflation” for “inflation” last week and confused the hell out of your readers for half the post until they realized you were just being careless.
Unless they steam vegetables before canning them, which would surprise me and would surprise me even more if everyone else knew it and I didn’t, in which case I guess the post makes sense.
. . .
Nope, looks like the post doesn’t make sense and canned food is boiled under pressure, not steamed. MattY 0, his readers, uh, also 0.
October 26th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
I believe a 1970s study on energy cost variables in a logistics system is damn near useless in 2009.
October 26th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Shit nobody cares about.
October 26th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Life would be so much simpler if we just tax everything out of existence.
As a childless adult male I insist that the entire world
tax those carbon footprint CO2 spewing wealth consuming rug rats into near oblivion.
We also cease subsidizing procreation.
If the poor want kids then let them pay or perish.
After all Earth will be better off without their polluting presence.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
What are these “vegetables” and “carrots” of which you write?
Are they some novel variety of burger? I’m always on the lookout for a new kind of burger. How much bacon is on them?
October 26th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
There’s another issue with these sorts of “Should I do X or Y?” analyses aside from the complicated set of considerations. Suppose that we figure out that X is better than Y along some environmental dimension – if people then run out and do a whole lot of X because it’s “greener”, we may be worse off from an environmental perspective. Sort of like people gorging on low-fat foods because it’s “healthier.” Pricing would help get the relative comparisons correct, as well as the absolute comparisons.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
It’s very frustrating to watch this constant bickering over infinitesimal energy expenditures, and ignoring the giant SUV that drives 10 miles to the grocery store to purchase the items.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
OK…WTF is up with these steam packets of veggies taking over the frozen foods section? Our Kroger’s stock of frozen veggies are getting smaller and they are replacing some of them with these steam veggie packets.
For example, Freshlike brand cut green beans are GONE. You can get corn, carrots, and yes even brussel sprouts, but no freaking green beans!….They don’t even carry whole grean beans.
Instead, we get these prepackaged steam veggies, most of the combo of veggies I could care less for, and many of them have some sort of god awful sauce in them (I tried some red skinned potatoes with rosemary sauce, and another with some sort of oriental orange sauce, and the immediately were thrown away because neither the wife and I could stand the taste). You have no control over the portions of any of them. Have to cook the whole thing or nothing.
I just want to have my corn, carrots, peas, and beans in big bags…so I can mix and match and portion out the amount I want to cook for dinner. Unfortunately their shelf space is being usurped by these wretched overprocessed bags of steamed goop.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
or should I say, in internet vernacular, can i has flat carbon tax.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
It’s very frustrating to watch this constant bickering over infinitesimal energy expenditures, and ignoring the giant SUV that drives 10 miles to the grocery store to purchase the items.
I agree. Which is another reason to implement carbon pricing, per what TheF79 @6 said. People will feel in their pocketbooks what kind of consumer choices are important from a GHG-perspective and which ones are trivial.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
@6 and 7:
You guys seem to be missing Matt’s point. He’s saying these kinds of complex calculations would not be necessary if we put a price on carbon. You wouldn’t need to know the entire history of everything you buy to know it’s comparative impact on global warming. You’d just need to look at the price. The net carbon produced by the product would be reflected in the price. This would apply whether what you’re talking about is a bag of frozen Brussels sprouts or 20 gallons of fuel for your SUV.
However, I think Matt oversimplifies a bit. The net impact of a product on global warming would be captured by reasonable carbon pricing. But other environmental factors would not be.
@Choo!Choo! Is it your intention to always sound like a scolding crazy person who scoffs at those who do not hear the voices in your head? Use paragraphs like a normal person and maybe people will be able to take you a little bit more seriously.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
OK…WTF is up with these steam packets of veggies taking over the frozen foods section? Our Kroger’s stock of frozen veggies are getting smaller and they are replacing some of them with these steam veggie packets.
I think the food industry is sort of strange in that it can’t really grow by just getting people to buy more and more of its stuff. That has been done to some extent, but there are limits on just how much food people can and will buy. So they have to find ingenious ways of getting you to spend more on the same amount of food — I guess this is maybe one of them.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
@Choo!Choo! Is it your intention to always sound like a scolding crazy person who scoffs at those who do not hear the voices in your head? Use paragraphs like a normal person and maybe people will be able to take you a little bit more seriously.
On the contrary, it’s easy to identify Choo!Choo!’s posts from a distance and thus avoid them.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
@8: Gads! You might have to start buying fresh vegetables!
As for Brussels sprouts, I’d like to suggest that steamed or boiled Brussels sprouts taste wretched. If you want to eat Brussels sprouts (and you really should because when prepared correctly, they taste really great!) you should prepare them as follows:
* Cut each sprout in half
* Put all sprouts in a bowl
* Coat with olive oil, salt, and pepper
* Place in a roasting pan or cookie sheet
* Bake in the oven at about 475 degress F for about 10 minutes (until they seem like they’re just about to burn)
They taste like popcorn. Amazingly delicious.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
You’d just need to look at the price. The net carbon produced by the product would be reflected in the price.
Actually, that was the very point I was trying to make… obviously didn’t do it very well
October 26th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
If your biggest moral dilemma is related to the freezers used to preserve your organic peas, then you are not part of the problem.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Rob Mac: You wouldn’t need to know the entire history of everything you buy to know it’s comparative impact on global warming. You’d just need to look at the price. The net carbon produced by the product would be reflected in the price.
Well, the net GHG produced would be reflected in part of the price. The rest of the price is other stuff like pay for the employees of the company that made the product, the raw materials in the product, fees paid to consulting firms hired to tell the company to fire a bunch of people, etc.. And unless the price is broken down, you have no way of knowing whether a product is more expensive than another because its less GHG-efficient or because the company spends a lot on advertising or because the are worse at negotiating with their suppliers or whatever.
I think you’re right on a society-wide scale, assuming the proper price for GHG emissions can be discovered and agreed upon. But on the individual level, some people desire to live green beyond the “socially optimal” level of greenness. I don’t think the rest of society owes these people any special treatment with regard to packaging or price-label laws, but they may be useful nonetheless, in cases where a consumer is otherwise indifferent between two products but would, all else being equal, prefer to buy the one that’s better for energy independence and climate change.
That said, this is small potatoes. Things like what car you buy and how many plane flights you take overwhelm stuff like whether you buy canned or frozen vegetables, and GHG pricing in these areas will do the heavy lifting, and people who want to be especially green already know that flying is bad and driving inefficient cars is bad.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
The net carbon produced by the product would be reflected in the price.
So you would know which product was more environmental by looking at the price?
October 26th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
If you want to eat Brussels sprouts (and you really should because when prepared correctly, they taste really great!) you should prepare them as follows:
. . .
* Bake in the oven at about 475 degress F for about 10 minutes (until they seem like they’re just about to burn)
They taste like popcorn. Amazingly delicious.
For those new to baking, your oven is probably different from the oven used to optimize the recipe. When I bake Brussel sprouts, 425F is a better bet.
And steamed Brussel sprouts taste lousy only if you oversteam them. When they’re done, squeeze some lemon juice, pour sparingly some non-extra-virgin olive oil (optional), and sprinkle some black pepper on them. Salt to taste.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
If your biggest moral dilemma is related to the freezers used to preserve your organic peas, then you are not part of the problem.
Well, there are plenty of people who jet set and yet think of themselves as environmentally conscious and want to buy low-GHG products, as a way of performing (for themselves as much as others) their greenness. You could even argue that breaking down the price to make it easy to identify lower-GHG products makes it easy for people to be green in unimportant ways, which could be bad. On the other hand, for people who aren’t really aware, having the GHG price in their face on supermarket shelves might make them more conscious in the long run.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
i wonder if the costs of running the freezers would be efficiently distributed enough among the items in the entire market, let alone the correct freezer items. High-turnover freezer goods should see lower price increases than ones that sit in there for longer, but is that really going to happen? More likely, the store manager will see overall electricity prices go up and raise all prices accordingly.
Or maybe they’ll get all of their electricity from renewable sources, and then have cheaper food than their competitors down the street. So many moving parts make carbon pricing exciting!
October 26th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Another benefit of carbon pricing is that people who don’t have the sense of decency to give two figs about carbon emissions have a motive to choose the lower-carbon item, too.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Well, there are plenty of people who jet set and yet think of themselves as environmentally conscious and want to buy low-GHG products, as a way of performing (for themselves as much as others) their greenness.
Perhaps, but these people aren’t going to buy canned vegetables, regardless. I don’t think I would, either, to tell you the truth.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
seriously, canned vegetables? If that is the answer, you are asking the wrong question. Not that I’m in love with frozen vegetables either, but canned?
October 26th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
So, Jason L., you are suggesting that the producer somehow calculate the net GHC “tax” (or cap and trade fee or whatever) on a product and be required to display that in some way? As long as the net GHC “tax” is reasonably easy to calculate, that seems like a pretty good idea to me.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Christopher, Hugo, you guys don’t buy canned black beans or tomatoes or pumpkin?
October 26th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
I bet they’d buy canned baby corn, which is also available in frozen form. They’d probably also buy canned olives, canned tomatoes (for pasta sauce), canned beans (black, garbanzo, etc.) and maybe canned artichoke hearts or hearts of palm. Or maybe I’m just listing which canned vegetables *I* buy, except I don’t like baby corn and I never feel the need to buy hearts of palm.
And separate GHG-emission labels would not just be limited to canned vs. frozen vegetables, presumably.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
In case it wasn’t clear that the left wants to regulat every aspect of my life. It’s downright amusing that there’s any fear of conservatives “regulating morality”; the left has much, much bigger plans in that sphere. It’s just “good” morality, you see.
October 26th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Realistically, you can’t even do it then, because there’s too many variables that involve arbitrary and qualitative judgment from humans who are being corrupted by interested and deep-pocketed parties.
Well, maybe if we had some angels to perform the calculations, there’s a chance it might come out right.
October 26th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Canned vegetables.
Yuck.
October 26th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Rob Mac @25: So, Jason L., you are suggesting that the producer somehow calculate the net GHC “tax” (or cap and trade fee or whatever) on a product and be required to display that in some way?
I haven’t thought much about whether this would be a good idea, but it’s the only way for people who want GHG emissions to be the determining factor in their purchasing choices to be able to have them as such. I brought it up in reply to your post @11.
Goods have a price floor composed of the costs of making and distributing the good. The price you pay above that is what the company thinks it can get from the consumer. So the price the food manufacturer pays in GHG taxes (explicit, and implicit in the costs of its own inputs) is not readily discernible from a price label.
The question of how to incorporate the social costs of GHG emissions into the prices people pay for things is separate from the question of how to individually determine how much GHGs were emitted in the production of a particular good. Society doesn’t really care about the second question as long as it gets the first question right. Individuals may still nonetheless care about the second question, and it may be worth it to them to pay a little extra for the answer. The challenge is either the technical one of figuring out how you can get people who care to be extra green but not society in general to pay for the costs of assembling and displaying the information that allows them to be extra green or the political one of how you persuade everyone else to foot the bill.
If GHG-emissions labels would actually reduce GHGs (on top of reductions from GHG-pricing), and would do so more cheaply than would pricing GHG commensurately more, then clearly they should be implemented. I have no way of knowing whether this is true, however.
October 26th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Olives, beans, and tomato sauce make sense as canned foods. Carrots, onions, potatoes, yams, and other “rooty” crops ship and store so easily that it doesn’t make sense to not enjoy them freshly prepared as often as possible. Of course, I have time to cook and some people don’t, so I’m not going to judge anyone for using frozen vegetables. On the other hand, don’t even think of serving me canned carrots.
October 26th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
In case it wasn’t clear that the left wants to regulat every aspect of my life. It’s downright amusing that there’s any fear of conservatives “regulating morality”; the left has much, much bigger plans in that sphere. It’s just “good” morality, you see.
Regulating who I can have sex with and regulating something that is physically ruining the planet on which the entire species relies for existence are not the same thing. My sex doesn’t affect you. Your greenhouse gases do affect me.
October 26th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Oops, post @ 33 should have looked like this:
Regulating who I can have sex with and regulating something that is physically ruining the planet on which the entire species relies for existence are not the same thing. My sex doesn’t affect you. Your greenhouse gases do affect me.
October 26th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
James Robertson #29,
Negative externalities are a greater affront to personal liberty than democratically-enacted regulations.
At least you can vote for a regulation. The regulation will expand liberty for some (more access to clean water, for instance, while limiting liberty for others (penalties for dumping toxins into water). Without the regulation, unaccountable participants in a market can and do negatively affect the quality of life for non-participants.
October 26th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
I was going to reply to James’s comment but then thought it would be better just to ignore him. Clearly, there is a collective action problem here, and the rest of us need to democratically find a way of getting Kenny B. and b9n10nt to ignore him unless he brings something substantive to the table (which, to be fair, sometimes he does. Just not this time.).
October 26th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Christopher, Hugo, you guys don’t buy canned black beans or tomatoes or pumpkin?
Dried beans, canned tomatoes, not a lot of pumpkin in any form. It’s not that canned vegetables are evil, it’s just that I’ve got a long list of much preferable, more substantive ways to cut my carbon emissions before I need to worry about this distinction.
October 26th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Christopher, Hugo, you guys don’t buy canned black beans or tomatoes or pumpkin?
Sure, I buy black beans canned. But that’s not a vegetable. I also sometimes make my pasta sauce from those giant cans of whole peeled canned tomatoes (it takes a ton of tomatoes to make it from fresh. Also not a vegetable, and there’s not really any frozen tomato competition (is there?), but I take your point. I use fresh pumpkin though.
The only canned vegetable I buy is asian baby corn, as it’s hard to find that fresh even at asian markets.
October 26th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
@Jason L.
Feeding trolls is more fun than arguments about whether or not canned vegetables are gross.
As far as separate labels for GHGs, I’m not really into the idea if you’re also going to price emissions. that seems kind of like double regulation. Not to mention, the very existence of such a reporting requirement (which, as Matt explains, is tragically complicated to do) is liable to raise the price of goods all the way around, including low emission goods. I say let the price do the talking.
October 26th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
As someone who ONLY eats frozen vegetables, meh.
(I mean I eat other stuff to, but all the veggies I eat are Steamfresh brand.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Is it actually possible for somebody to be so spoiled that he thinks it’s his right to dump his sewage in my yard, and an affront to his liberty to be so much as charged a trifle for the privilege?
October 26th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
You should try cooking them. Not as crunchy, but so much more enjoyable.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Does anybody else think it’s weird that those recipes for the “right” way to cook brussel sprouts didn’t include bacon? The only way brussel sprouts are edible is with bacon.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Frozen brussel sprouts are delicious. Excellent choice of picture.
@too many steves – brussel sprouts shouldn’t have a flavor much different from cabbage (but have a better texture, I think) unless you overcook them. Blanche them and then saute or roast… very good.
October 26th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Canned veggies should be used as an exemplar in the coming sodium consumption pricing battle. Sodium kills.
October 26th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
the left has much, much bigger plans in that sphere. It’s just “good” morality, you see.
No, J-Rob, it’s pricing in the externalities in the world beyond your suburban compound.
October 26th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
re: #41–
October 26th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
The only thing that really matters is that canned vegetables inedible and frozen aren’t much better. Fresh or nothing, carbon impact be damned.
October 26th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
All you wankers dissing canned vegetables are in for a rough surprise when the Zombie Apocalypse comes. I welcome GHG labels as I have tried to set up both my underground bunker and my mountain redoubt in as environmentally friendly way as possible. Can anyone recommend a vendor that sells green ammo in large quantities?
October 26th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
“For example, is it better to buy frozen vegetables or steamed ones:”
Of course, on the question of frozen vs canned vegetables, there’s little doubt that in most cases the frozen ones are more delicious. (Beans are a unique exception. It’s rare that canned anything tastes better than fresh [I'm changing the subject here] but those refried beans in the can are so delicious you can eat them raw; really good refried beans are challenging to make]).
I’m watching Bizarre Foods. This is the second episode the Andrew fellow plugs raccoon meat. Is there a burgeoning raccoon meat market? Maybe he has chickens. The cat was up in the window last night (feet on the bed, paws on the window sill) sniffing out (presumably) a raccoon in the trees; you heard the branches bend. Maine Coon v. raccoon.
October 27th, 2009 at 4:38 am
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