> Agriculture is a whole lot of “sure it’s stupid, but it works and is cheaper than the alternative” The fan idea is actually quite okay, cold pockets exist. B

> Agriculture is a whole lot of “sure it’s stupid, but it works and is cheaper than the alternative” The fan idea is actually quite okay, cold pockets exist. But let us not forget that "cheaper than the alternative" depends on the prices of everything else. The problem capitalism constantly keeps running into is that certain externalities are not priced into that "cheaper" choice. You can defrost your fruit with helicopters if the fuel and helicopters are cheap enough, but you may be happily stacking a debt elsewhere, e.g. in the form of polution, social costs, climate crisis, draught etc. The problem here is that these externalized costs are often not paid by the people who stack them up, which is when regulation can become increasingly benefitial. Granted, the "crazier" measures like defrosting fruit with helicopters are often just limited stop-band measures in a bad phase that can safe a whole harvest, but if they are used to battle the stacking hidden cost they are in the danger of becoming more and more common while making the problems worse (or at least masking it). An example: I grew up in the Alps, where skiing is a thing. Each year ski resorts have to rely more and more on artifical snow, which uses extreme amounts of energy and water. Climate change means that the snow mark moves higher and higher each winter, but what about the communities that built a living around the slope and it's tourism if it is their resort that has no snow this winter? That's when you go in with the artifical snow. Twenty years ago that may have been a few bad days in the year or just small parts of the slope, and over slow creeping times it has become more and more. The problem is it just prolongs the needed change, it doesn't solve it. Maybe they are lucky and blessed with snow next year, but what about 10 years down the line? The good ski resort villages are already aware that this is an issue and try to move more towards summer tourism, with the artifical snow just buying them time to do that transformation. But the only reason they have to do that is because energy is expensive and artifical snow works only down to certain temperatures (to warm and it cannot be produced). These limiting factors may not exist elswhere.