Pro's and Con's of Local Sustainable Economy

This morning I stumbled uponthis blogpost, that talks about a book that describes a fictional story about a small town that relies completely on the local economy. Something that I've been thinking about a lot... but wait. You might be asking yourself, why would we even do/want that? What are the advantages? What are the downsides?

Advantages of a more locally sustainable economy:

• More "High-End" Jobs - Is it not sickening that hear such stories of grocery store owners whose business' have been destroyed by Walmart, only to be hired by Walmart for minimum wage?
• Lower Emissions - eliminating long hauls will decrease the embedded carbon emissions in products
• Happier Neighborhoods - I feel better when I know who I am helping when I buy a local product. It feels empowering to know that you helped "Bob", that you know personally to stay in business.
• Better Quality Products - the US and Canada have strict regulations on product quality which are often undercut by companies that import. One example: paint finishes on toys.

Disadvantages of going local:

• Product Cost - things will cost more. Production in the US and Canada is more expensive, but do the advantages not offset the disadvantages. (As oil prices rise, we might soon be at a tie though. Our money will go towards paying for the product, rather then the transport.)
  
• Somewhat More Inconvenient - we might not always be able to quickly jump into one store and get everything we need.

There is so many more arguments for both sides. It's up to you to decide weather you want one or the other side. Judging from recent trends in or economy though, I would say we need to strive towards a more local economy to be sustainable in the future


___________


A recent article in thestar.com: Oil costs eroding globalization: CIBC

.
image by bonedad

.

Consider the Embedded Carbon Emissions

This message goes out to all radical environmentalists, please don't take this offensively, since I consider myself one of you as well, this also works as a reminder to me:

I understand that Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is one of our highest standards that we should follow and I'm sure that buying a super fancy clothes line does not fall under that moto.

I recently bought a clothes line from cordo clip, I could have bought the old school line with regular clothes pins (which by the way is almost as expensive), build some goal posts to hang the line up and done. My wife has loads of linen to dry and this one will really cut down on the time used to hang clothes and sheets up for drying.

Here's what I really want to point out though: Please support Canadian business'. The financial risk taken by a company in Canada is much higher than a Chinese business (because of much higher labour costs and taxation). Cordo Clip is made in Canada and such a product would usually come from China. This means, the carbon footprint to make this product is most likely smaller than something made in China. Also, we employ people locally and the product saves some serious energy when used (air drying your clothes saves almost as much energy as taking a car of the road).

So please consider the "embedded carbon emissions".