The average 18 wheeler loaded at 80,000 lbs gets about 7 miles per gallon.

[dreamnightwind]

8. Great post

Out here, you can stand on or near the Golden Gate bridge, and watch the container ships come in, mostly from China, but other places too. It's amazing how often they come. Aside from the fuel and emissions of the trucks is the fuel and emissions from these ships, I have no idea but I'm sure it is a lot.

You've identified the problem quite well, and our president is working to make it worse with agreements like the TPP. It seems that, much like Goldman Sachs, we can't vote "free trade" out of office.

I can understand the argument that some items can't be produced locally, we'll need some importation, but we're heavily tilted the other way. Many of the items we're importing are just a way for corporations to sell goods made in unregulated countries with cheap and desperate labor pools, undercutting local farmers.

Another way local farmers are undercut is through the regulatory process. Out here, perhaps 7 years ago or so, a new regulation was put in place, written by large corporate dairy farmers, that required a practice the large farmers already used, and that the small local farmers could not afford. The result was that roughly 40% of the small local dairies soon either sold their farms to the large corporations, or just went out of business. That is the kind of thing that gets spun by the RW as the negative impacts of big government and regulation, but the real problem is a captured regulatory system, where the regulations are literally written by lawyers working for large corporate interests.