OJ Bigger Villian than Fiji Water!

Environmentalist activists must certainly mean well.  But, at times, some are so silly that all you can do is laugh.  Consider a recent Tree Hugger post comparing bottled water to orange juice and its lament about carbon footprints!  The post points out that orange juice has an even bigger footprint than—brace yourself—Fiji water! Fiji water is supposedly the world’s “most wasteful” water because it is shipped across continents.

Alas, if you don’t live in a community that grows oranges organically for locally produced juice, the carbon footprint is just unacceptable. In fact, the post concludes, all citrus products are “an imported luxury” that responsible environmentalists shouldn’t be drinking every day!

What the greens have discovered here is no great revelation.  The reality is:  Everything in life has a carbon footprint! And bottled water probably has one of the lower ones. Unfortunately for so many well-intended greens, having a light carbon footprint requires considerable self denial.  If orange juice is so bad, just consider the carbon footprint of the computers used to produce Tree Hugger posts, the coffee consumed (do they really need coffee anyway?) while writing such posts, and yes, even that morning McMuffin!

Fortunately for market advocates, we understand the value of globalization—the opportunity eat bananas from Brazil, drink wine from Australia, and and yes, even consume water all the way from Fiji. We recognize that a better world is one in which more people have more access to such goods so more people can eat well, heat their homes, and live well. Drinking orange juice, water, or whatever, from places where it is most efficiently produced around the globe is a blessing, not a curse. In fact, CEI has shown many times over that the best approach to climate change is not to get wrapped up in such foolish worries or policies that they produce, like bans on bottled water!