Movable Feast

Excessive boredom and procrastination caused me to send the following letter to the NYTimes this afternoon:

To the Editor:

“Movable Feast...” (April 26) introduces the idea of addressing pollution by including environmental costs in the price of food via fuel taxes. This principle, called a Pigouvian tax, makes for effective environmental and economic policy but, sadly, often finds its way to the legislative waste basket.

The article presents an alternative where food labels include a product’s carbon content. In fact, this ingenious labeling system already exists. It’s called the price tag. There are countless scarce resources included as inputs in any production process and the cost of those resources are easily aggregated through the always-honest price mechanism. Implicit in the argument for carbon labeling is the popular notion that buying local is the highest consumer virtue. Once prices account for environmental costs, however, there is nothing especially noble about voluntarily wasting additional resources. True, some consumers care about minimizing environmental impact. But everyone cares about managing their budget and some even care about helping farmers in impoverished regions earn a decent living. Maybe that cheap Chilean apple isn’t so bad after all.