You try to eat locally, but do you, um, eat out locally? With the argument that long-distance dating hurts the earth, Slate says you should.
The idea that many folks are "willing to be a locavore but not a locasexual," as author Barron YoungSmith puts it, builds on the notion of eco-hypocrites who aren't willing to curtail their air travel, but regularly do things like recycle, buy carbon offsets, or frequent farmers markets. But picking a local date could matter more than what's on your plate. For a hypothetical San Francisco resident dating someone in D.C., "breaking up would be about 10 times better for the environment than going vegetarian," the piece says. The Slow Food movement made people aware of where our food comes from, with some calculating food miles and committing to only eat grub within a certain radius. Why not apply that to relationships?
Isn't it time for a Date Local movement, too? Let's start thinking about "sex miles": Just how far was this person shipped to hook up with you? And how many times more efficient would it be to date someone within a 100-mile radius? If the movement spread globally, mirroring either the decentralized development of Local Food co-ops or the manifesto-and-chapter model that built up to the Slow Food movement's mega-confab this summer, its environmental benefits could multiply many times.
Spewing less CO2, saving money on plane tix, and being closer to your lovah? Sounds like a recipe for sex success.
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Comments
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sindark Posted 1:48 am
24 Oct 2008
Air travel emissions associated with Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the like probably exceed those associated with romantically motivated voyages.
That being said, the general suggestion to live a life involving minimal long-distance travel is a good one.
a sibilant intake of breath
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Sean Casten Posted 2:08 am
24 Oct 2008
Let's not let carbon rule all our moral judgments.
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Russ Posted 2:48 am
24 Oct 2008
Let's not let carbon rule all our moral judgments.
What precisely does "worldly, well-travelled" mean in the age of cheap yahoo air travel, McDonald's, Nike, Walmart, and the rest of it?
So much for that parochial moron Thoreau, hmm?
"I have travelled a good deal in Concord."
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Ashley Braun Posted 3:17 am
24 Oct 2008
While I appreciate furthering the concept of "going local," I don't s'pose the author of the Slate article has actually suffered through a long-distance relationship. Don't you think we want to be in, say, the same time zone?
What's a bus-ridin', vegetarian gal to do?
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eriqa Posted 3:36 am
24 Oct 2008
Seriously, it's not as if anyone chooses to not meet anyone local.
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Sean Casten Posted 9:38 am
24 Oct 2008
I assume you're being perjorative when you say that:
What precisely does "worldly, well-travelled" mean in the age of cheap yahoo air travel, McDonald's, Nike, Walmart, and the rest of it?
The breadth of perspective that I personally find so refreshing about Obama isn't because he's eaten at McDonalds, shopped at WalMart or owns a pair of Air Jordans. It's because he's lived in a muslim country, is the child of parents from wildly different cultures and appears to have assimilated a breadth of perspective that one can only get from a breadth of experience. As against that, the thing that I find so frightening about Palin is that she truly thinks that living in Alaska gives her an instinct into the Russian psyche (much as Bush took some odd pride in the lack of stamps in his own passport before he took office.)
The world is vastly richer for those who have the financial luxury to see it. (And I'd beg to differ that airfare is cheap. It's bloody expensive nowadays!) And the challenges we face in a globalized world require folks who can bring a richer, global perspective thereto. Thoreau was a nice guy and a good writer, but I wouldn't put him in charge of our foreign policy, energy policy, economic policy or even running a company that requires a global perspective.
Apropos of the initial post, it is also vastly richer for those who don't have the financial luxury to travel, but were fortunate enough to marry someone from a different culture or geography to broaden their own worldview.
This is all wildly off the environmental theme of Grist... but that's why I said it's nuts. Being an ethical, contributing member of society does sometimes require you to release CO2. (I will confess that I am personally exhaling and consuming electricity as I type.) Sometimes, that's not a net bad thing.
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Russ Posted 11:38 am
24 Oct 2008
I guess detractors would call me a "luddite", but I don't think having the money to fly around the world means a damn thing.
On the contrary, there's the evident fact that flying all over the place has not lifted vermin like Bush or Palin out of the cesspool into which they were born one bit.
The reason I pointed out Thoreau (whom I'd happily pick over any of this globalist scum) is to point out how spirit and art and intellect have nothing to do with gutter material measures like miles flown.
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Sean Casten Posted 12:14 pm
24 Oct 2008
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Pangolin Posted 5:39 pm
24 Oct 2008
Add to that the myth/perception that it's always easier to hook up away from home (hence college spring breaks) and you have a recipe for ecocide built into our genes. There are probably ways to thwart this by pre-selecting likely groups of strangers, stripping them of their techno-goodies and dropping them in groups of twenty on desert islands and remote valleys reality-tv style but it smacks of paternalism.
Besides, how are they going to sell us piles of useless crap if we're comfortably holed up with an exciting and willing mate. That would kill the economy.
Put the Carbon Back
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Wolverine Posted 10:09 am
25 Oct 2008
The way to thwart it is to make fuel expensive enough that people don't choose to do it.
And to those who don't object to causing environmental destruction for this ridiculous purpose: Long distance relationships, with some rare exceptions, were unheard of until internet dating came along (another reason to hate computers!). We're not talking about once-a-year spring break trips here, we're talking about constant long distance travel.
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amazingdrx Posted 12:15 pm
25 Oct 2008
Virtual love, it's pefect. Now if someone would invent a sensory communication device, wireless broadband connected of course!
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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HWilkes Posted 6:22 pm
25 Oct 2008
Wolverine, have you ever lived anywhere you didn't have all that much in common (much less enough in common for the possibility of real intimacy) with the people around you?
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texasjenny Posted 1:49 am
28 Oct 2008
Long-distance relationships have existed since the age of the conquistadors. We just see each other more now that we have planes.
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