The Guardian's Lucy Siegle writes a column on Ethical and Green Living. In her December 28 piece, she responds to the question: "How can I go green in 2015?"
She writes:
2015 is all about self-reliance. More dynamic than the downshifting trend (work fewer hours, move to the countryside, keep bees), self-reliance is about actively claiming ownership of our lives and wresting supply chains from global corporations. So from food to finance, watch out for local organisations which offer alternative ways of doing things and systems that are not reliant on the whims of big business or local government.
In 2015 there are no extra points for recycling, saving energy or using the bus, not the car – these are settled behaviours that you should be doing automatically.
It is always worth considering ways we can reduce our environmental impact (and there's no better time than New Year's Day to set goals). In many instances, the recommendation to go local is an environmentally sound one. However, reducing one's impact can be more complicated than simply buying the version of what you're looking for that was made closest to where you live. As an example, Mike Berners-Lee points out in How Bad Are Bananas? that, depending on where you live, what time of year it is, and what you're buying, local produce might have a bigger carbon footprint than buying a similar product that was shipped halfway around the world.
How is this possible? Well, if you live in New England and buy strawberries in the winter, anything produced locally at that time would have to be produced in a greenhouse. The emissions of heating the greenhouse are actually greater than the emissions of shipping from Mexico on a boat on a berry-for-berry basis. If you were really concerned about reducing the environmental impact of your food choices, though, then you'd know better than to buy strawberries in New England in the winter. When it comes to food, reaping the environmental benefits of going local also requires going seasonal. (Sustainable Table's online tool can help identify what's in season where you live (in the US). Alternatively, a quick Google search will provide ample seasonal food calendars by location.)
The purpose of bringing up all this, though, is not to discourage people from going local, or even to discourage people from reading and following Siegle's generally good advice. The point is that making the best decisions for the environment can be more complicated than it initially appears. Moreover, taking some pro-environmental actions might encourage falling prey to single-action bias, whereby we feel we're already doing our part for the environment because we [insert favorite pro-environmental behavior here] already, and that's enough, isn't it?
The truth is, individual behavior change alone isn't going to have an effect at the scale necessary to avert many environmental disasters. But that doesn't mean we're powerless and can't work together. So when setting your goals to go green in 2015, by all means set goals to improve your individual behavior. But don't forget to include collective action, political activism, and voting with your dollars.