A small news article from Science has been taped above my desk
for the last few years. I don’t remember who originally gave it
to me, or why I even hung it up, but there it is, nestled
between a couple XKCD cartoons. The article is titled “The Wine
Divide” and it raises many questions about sustainability,
inherent biases in conventional wisdom, and what the term
“local” means in a global economy. And it’s about wine. The
basic premise of the article is that, in general, the carbon-
cost of shipping wine by freight (as in, on a truck) is greater
than the cost of shipping by cargo (as in, on a boat). In wine,
transportation outweighs all other aspects of production and
distribution, so using the cost of transport, two scientists
calculated the cost of buying wine from Napa Valley or Bordeaux,
France if you live in New York. Shipping a 750-milliliter bottle
from Bordeaux to New York City emits 1.8 kilograms of carbon,
whereas trucking one from the Napa Valley emits 2.6 kg. They
also calculated a Napa-Bordeaux li