73. A Rose By Any Other Distance

[0] From APM, American Public Media and WNYC, this is Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace.

[1] Here's the host of Marketplace, Kai Rizdahl.

[2] Time now for a little bit of Freakonomics Radio that moment every couple of weeks where we talk to Stephen Dubner, the co -author of the books and the blogs of the same name.

[3] It is the hidden side of everything.

[4] Dubner, as always, it's good to talk to you.

[5] Great to be here, Kai.

[6] Hey, you know, it seems like you talk about your mom on the show quite a bit.

[7] Am I right?

[8] I don't know, maybe.

[9] And it sounds from what I hear that you two have a fairly loving relationship.

[10] I'm also right on that.

[11] Number one, she's listening.

[12] So watch yourself.

[13] And number two, yeah, you know, we get along, me and mom.

[14] I'm just thinking with Mother's Day coming up, you know, two Sundays from now, I'm guessing you're thinking about maybe sending your mom some flowers, yes?

[15] Okay, two things.

[16] One is that it's all I can do to remember to get my wife flowers on Mother's Day, let alone my own mother.

[17] And two, the dirty secret, which I will deny, if you repeat it, my wife actually does the flowers from my mother.

[18] Ah, but mom does get.

[19] But she gets something.

[20] She gets them.

[21] So she is not alone.

[22] In the U .S. every year, we spend about $12 billion on cut flowers alone.

[23] Mother's Day is obviously a huge part of that.

[24] But here's something you may not know, Kai.

[25] About 80 % of these cut flowers are imported, mostly from equatorial countries that get, you know, 12 hours of year around sunlight.

[26] Mario Valle is a flower wholesaler in Los Angeles.

[27] He handles about 2 million flowers a year.

[28] And here's how they get to him.

[29] Anything that's coming out of South America is generally air freighted into Miami, then it's trucked over to California.

[30] They fly to Miami and then drive it to here.

[31] And I do not want to rain on your mother's parade or anybody's mother's parade, but there is something going on here.

[32] We live in this day and age where people are obsessed with food miles and the carbon footprint of everything that we consume.

[33] So if that's the way we're going to be, here's what I want to know.

[34] where is the outrage over these globe -trotting Mother's Day flowers, okay?

[35] I mean, if you ship food across the planet, at least we eat it.

[36] It's our sustenance, right?

[37] But with flowers, you just look at them for a couple of days and then, you know, into the trash.

[38] So this is you up on your high horse here.

[39] You are now killing all the joy and glory that is Mother's Day and cut flowers in this country?

[40] Kai, it is not my nature to scold.

[41] I'd hope you know that by now.

[42] But I do find it curious that cut flowers have somehow escaped the environmental scrutiny that accompanies what we eat, how we transport ourselves, you know, it may be a halo effect from the flowers themselves.

[43] I mean, how do you hate on roses and tulips?

[44] They're so pretty, right?

[45] Yeah, so here's the thing, though.

[46] If I don't, well, let me rephrase that.

[47] If my wife doesn't send my mother flowers for Mother's Day, then I'm in deep and serious trouble.

[48] I don't want that to happen.

[49] Okay, that's the last thing I want to happen.

[50] So let's look to a different holiday for a potential solution.

[51] Okay, Christmas.

[52] Every year, we buy about 35 million Christmas trees in this country, about $2 billion worth.

[53] Now, again, we're talking crops that are harvested and transported solely for our viewing, but not our eating pleasure.

[54] But every year, the share of artificial Christmas trees grows.

[55] And now we're up to about 40 % fake Christmas trees, meaning there's no need to grow and transport another tree next year, you know, the year after.

[56] Hey, wait, no, stop, because I'm not doing a fake Christmas tree.

[57] I'm just not going to do it.

[58] Let me try to persuade you of a little something.

[59] Kai, you have a package there in the studio.

[60] We sent you something.

[61] I do.

[62] It's a good time to open that up.

[63] Okay.

[64] Number one, I'm a little disappointed because it's clearly not beer.

[65] But all right, that's fine.

[66] Is this a corsage or something equally sensitive?

[67] What do you think?

[68] How do they look?

[69] They look lovely.

[70] They're yellow roses.

[71] And what are they made of?

[72] Yeah, they're not real.

[73] They're plastic flowers.

[74] And they're beautiful, right?

[75] They do wonderful things with plastic these days.

[76] So here's the thing.

[77] We may associate flowers with nature and plastic with the opposite.

[78] But that is, in fact, a very simplistic view of how the world actually works.

[79] So here's Suzanne Friedberg.

[80] She's a Dartmouth professor and author who's been studying how carbon footprints are calculated.

[81] Here's what she thinks of the idea of giving plastic flowers instead of real ones.

[82] Because they're so lightweight, they wouldn't need to be flown anywhere.

[83] They wouldn't decompose and produce greenhouse gases in any landfill.

[84] There's the endless lifespan.

[85] So the possibility is for re -gifting them.

[86] So, Kai, listen, if you really love your mother, and I'm not implying that you don't, by the way, I want you to think about sending her, having your wife send her some plastic flowers this year.

[87] Because if you want, you can even re -gift this bouquet I sent you because like Professor Friedberg suggests, you know, because I understand you're a bit of a cheapskate as well.

[88] Hey, man. I am, actually.

[89] How did you know?

[90] Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics .com is the website.

[91] He'll be back in a couple of weeks.

[92] We'll see you, man. Hey, thanks, Guy.

[93] Coming up on next week's podcast, there's a guy named Caleb in Oklahoma City who likes to argue with atheists.

[94] And when they say they don't believe in the existence of a soul, Caleb says, all right, so why don't you sell me yours?

[95] Give you $50 for it.

[96] So you'll hear from Caleb, from the guy he finally convinced to sell his soul, and from Harvard professor Michael Sandell, who talks about the moral limits of markets.

[97] Talk to you then.

[98] Thank you.