It seems to me like you are saying this from a point of privilege where you hve infinite choice and no regard for the cost.
By that logic, I should only eat what’s local, because everything else is certainly more emissions. If I live in a rural territory, where they only grow pigs and onions, that’s what I should eat to ‘reduce’ CO2? That’s just strictly false, and absolutely detrimental to your health.
People need a large variety of food for good nutrition and most rural certainly do not profuce such variety. If you live in a large city, “locally” produced stuff comes in from hundreds of miles, which have to be travelled somehow.
You can try your best as an individual to reduce your CO2, but that will only a miniscule amount of what makes the cogs turn in the economy. The only actually impactful, sweeping change is through regulation. Everything else is pretty much high-horsing and virtue signalling.
The best thing an individual can do to reduce emissions, is to vote accordingly.
People need variety in their diet, but they almost certainly do not need things like bananas, you can, in most places around the world, get nutritionally complete diets from locally grown sources, which will often be of higher quality, tastier and usually cheaper. I certainly can’t think of anything that I need, that couldn’t be bought at a farmers market. Now I can imagine some dietary restrictions and choices will have those needs, but restrictions can’t be helped and choices are probably more environmentally conscious anyway (vegetarians, vegans).
Local does not have to be in your rural community. Something that is trucked to your local store a hundred(s) miles is certainly better than something that was trucked to a port, shipped halfway across the globe, and trucked again.
“Doing something that Joe isn’t doing is not worth it” is a bad mindset, especially since Joe might not be doing it for the same reason. You can’t expect everyone to start doing it the same day. The more people buy local, the cheaper it becomes to buy locally and less profitable to import.
Regulations would be great, but Id prefer living in a society that can self regulate.
