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Monday, May 05, 2008 --- 93 days ago http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/eyesontrade/~3/282382388/redundant-trade.html
| This piece in the Times featured an issue that we will be doing a report on soon: redundant trade. Cod caught off Norway is shipped to China to be turned into filets,
then shipped back to Norway for sale. Argentine lemons fill supermarket
shelves on the Citrus Coast of Spain, as local lemons rot on the
ground. Half of Europe’s peas are grown and packaged in Kenya...
Increasingly efficient global transport networks make it practical
to bring food before it spoils from distant places where labor costs
are lower. And the penetration of mega-markets in nations from China to
Mexico with supply and distribution chains that gird the globe — like Wal-Mart , Carrefour and Tesco — has accelerated the trend.
But the movable feast comes at a cost: pollution — especially carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas — from transporting the food.
Under longstanding trade agreements, fuel for international freight
carried by sea and air is not taxed. Now, many economists,
environmental advocates and politicians say it is time to make shippers
and shoppers pay for the pollution, through taxes or other measures.
“We’re shifting goods around the world in a way that looks really bizarre,” said Paul Watkiss, an Oxford University economist who wrote a recent European Union report on food imports.
He noted that Britain, for example, imports — and exports — 15,000
tons of waffles a year, and similarly exchanges ... |
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