There’s a smack-down in the world of Word of the Year. Since 1991, it was the American Dialect Society which handed out the most repeated “Word of the Year” (as well as other variations, such as “Most Useful” or “Most Outrageous”). But the New Oxford American Dictionary is now in on the act, and the word this year is… ‘locavore’.

No, this isn’t a word for how Godzilla eats locations like herbivores eat herbs and omnivores eat dilemmas. Locavores eat close to home — they eat locally-grown produce, join local CSAs, visit farmer’s markets, garden, and may actually know the farmers who made their food.

I really like this choice. Why do I mention it in a global warming blog posting? Because, in my view, eating close to home has an ideal dual relationship to global warming:

• It is the one best thing you can do to lower your carbon footprint
• It is one essential thing you’ll need to learn how to do if or when gloabl warming gets out of control

The amount of fossil fuel involved in eating mass-produced food (fertilizer, farming, packaging, and transport) is ridiculous, and the entire enterprise rests upon a system which does not price the true cost of burning carbon into its price. Fair enough — to avoid that system, you eat local — minimize the packaging, minimize the fertilizer, minimize the transport.

Let’s say that the true cost of carbon gets priced into the food. What will happen? Food prices will go waaaaay up. Or, let’s say global warming gets out of control, entire areas of the world become unsuitable for wide scale farming, and food gets scarcer. What then? Better learn what grows close to you, and better learn who knows how to do it!

That’s the double-win of being a locavore.