Global supply-chain efficiency transfers ecological costs onto the world’s most vulnerable people

Evidence

As much as Walmart might render its supply chain more efficient, shipping thousands of tons of excessive plastic paraphernalia and food half way around the world is, in and of itself, a massive ecological catastrophe (Rosenthal 2008), and its ultimate costs will be borne by the anonymous “at risk” of the world, who suffer the most acute effects of erratic climate change, endemic ecological toxicity and resource depletion. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 306

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The externalized ecological costs of long-distance logistics extend the ‘Grafting & Growth’ article’s concern with infrastructure relations to supply chains.
• XREF: connects to: Sustainability accounting quantifies some impacts while obscuring hard-to-measure ones — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 88; Efficiency displaces friction onto hidden labor and environmental costs throughout supply chains — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 777; Export-oriented monocrop farming traps debt-burdened farmers in spirals ending in suicide — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 285 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Efficiency displaces friction onto hidden labor and environmental costs throughout supply chains #expands (0.95) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 777