Carbon Footprint

The New Yorker had a recent article on carbon footprints - how our consumer choices affect the amount of carbon we put into the environment. It is an interesting and often counterintuitive article. Would you expect that a bottle of wine from Bordeaux cost less in carbon than one from California? (Shipping by ship is very efficient; shipping overland is not) Or that it is way more carbon-efficient, in England, to buy roses from Kenya rather than Holland? (Don't have to heat the greenhouses in Kenya) Or that apples from New Zealand may have a smaller carbon footprint than apples from New York?

A couple of things are very clear. Drinking bottled water, rather than regular water, is ridiculous, carbon-footprint-wise. Insulating our houses, better windows, and efficient furnaces probably matter more than where our food comes from. And the most important thing we can do as a planet is to stop cutting down our rainforests.