The Oil We Eat
- Jim of Seattle
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The Oil We Eat
I read this article in Harper's Magazine a few months ago now, and then I re-read it, and it's still haunting me. It's a little long, but I think it's super important for everyone in this country to understand.
Here's my record label page thingie with stuff about me if you are so interested: https://greenmonkeyrecords.com/jim-of-seattle/
- Leaf
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Re: The Oil We Eat
Jim of Seattle wrote:I read this article in Harper's Magazine a few months ago now, and then I re-read it, and it's still haunting me. It's a little long, but I think it's super important for everyone in this country to understand.
...uh...could you pharaphrase that? It's too long, and I don't feel like being intellectual.. just sum the damn thing up man!
- Phil. Redmon.
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Re: The Oil We Eat
Harpers wrote:Food is politics.
Re: The Oil We Eat
Only tastier, and rugby union is probably somehow involved as well.Phil. Redmon. wrote:Food is politics.
- erik
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Re: The Oil We Eat
Unless you are Ted Nugent or pro-ana, you are killing the planet.Leaf wrote:paraphrase
- Kapitano
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It's a mish-mash of valid ideas from physics and chemistry, transposed directly to industrial economics.
The central premise is that the laws of thermodynamics apply directly to a money economy. Thus wealth cannnot be created or destroyed, it can only be moved around, and the only reason America can have so much wealth is that much of the rest of the world has so little.
So, if the rest of the world starts to reap, produce and consume on an American scale, there will not be enough wealth to go round, because there aren't enough natural resources to go round.
The central premise is that the laws of thermodynamics apply directly to a money economy. Thus wealth cannnot be created or destroyed, it can only be moved around, and the only reason America can have so much wealth is that much of the rest of the world has so little.
So, if the rest of the world starts to reap, produce and consume on an American scale, there will not be enough wealth to go round, because there aren't enough natural resources to go round.
<a href="http://kapitano.me.uk/">Kapitano's Site of Musical Stuff (Under Construction)</a>
- Jim of Seattle
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It also makes direct connections between the oil crises and the world's food supply. What we eat itself depends on oil due to petroleum-based fertilizers, without which our farms can't produce enough food to feed us, because we are artificially boosting the output of staple crops.
He also points out that crops like wheat and corn fare better where they are the only crop, thus pushing out more diverse ecosystems which help maintain the energy resources in the soil. Because we grow all this wheat and corn, we need to artificially enhance the nutrients in the soil and partly that is done through petroleum products.
He makes a case that the over-cultivation of the land over the centuries has a great deal to do with global warming and the deterioration of the environment, just like more infamous gas engines.
He makes a connection between the rise of industrial working classes and the increase in sugar consumption - that sugar has been used as a cheap way to fuel the new industrial economy.
and stuff like that
He also points out that crops like wheat and corn fare better where they are the only crop, thus pushing out more diverse ecosystems which help maintain the energy resources in the soil. Because we grow all this wheat and corn, we need to artificially enhance the nutrients in the soil and partly that is done through petroleum products.
He makes a case that the over-cultivation of the land over the centuries has a great deal to do with global warming and the deterioration of the environment, just like more infamous gas engines.
He makes a connection between the rise of industrial working classes and the increase in sugar consumption - that sugar has been used as a cheap way to fuel the new industrial economy.
and stuff like that
Here's my record label page thingie with stuff about me if you are so interested: https://greenmonkeyrecords.com/jim-of-seattle/
- Caravan Ray
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Re: The Oil We Eat
Rugby Union? Is ths Caravan Ray baiting?bzl wrote:Only tastier, and rugby union is probably somehow involved as well.Phil. Redmon. wrote:Food is politics.
Didn't read the whole article - seemed a bit like a smarty-pants stating the bleeding obvious - I'll go bact to it later.
JoS is right though - the sooner we all get our heads around these concepts - the better we'll all be. Further reading I would recommend for those interested is The Future Eaters by Tim Flannery and Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond - for explanations of why some people are rich, some people are poor and some people starve. Also any history of the island of Rapa-Nui (Easter Is) gives a scary story of a world in a microcosm.
And of course if we all played rugby union - men would feel more comfortable hugging in public.
- Caravan Ray
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- Future Boy
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Interesting in that he seems to be saying that farming was a bad idea from the very beginning. Yet, the forum he is making his point in would not exist without it, in some sense. Man, it'd be nice to be able to just step out back and shoot an elk.
New Album: Comes Apart | Missed Connections | With Johnny Cashpoint: A Maze of Death | modular synths on Youtube
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dude, whats FARK? OMG..it's only like the best site on the whole gawd danged internet mah man.Caravan Ray wrote:what's FARK?Hoblit wrote: It should be posted at FARK with a 'scary' tag
It's a *cough* news site. Wait, it's not news, it's fark.
http://www.fark.com
it's a site where a conglemeration of news articles are posted. Some of it is links to solid news reporting while others are information peices... the best part is that for each news article posted, there is a discussion thread (message board like)
There is more, like audio edits (which I don't bother with anymore) and photoshop contests (which are hit and miss funny these days) It's a great site. Really, check it out... and lose your job.
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Yeah, he is equating farming with the beginings of class seperation and resource depleting.Future Boy wrote:Interesting in that he seems to be saying that farming was a bad idea from the very beginning. Yet, the forum he is making his point in would not exist without it, in some sense. Man, it'd be nice to be able to just step out back and shoot an elk.
My favorite parts from it are the ratios of calories burned to the number of calories created. And other similar energy ratios he mentions. I think thats the real problem..the scary stuff. We've found ways that SEEM convenient as far as production and distribution...but in the end...it really defeats the purpose.
If we as humans can find a better sway to swing those ratios, we'd be alright.
As for the Elk, I'm not sure he factored in the energy it took to make the gun he used nor the energy used to convert the animal to food. Or the neccesary energy used to preserve the food.
- Jim of Seattle
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Good point, but the energy used to store it is a sunk cost, meaning that somewhere somebody is going to be using energy to store that guy's protein. Also, the making of the gun was a single use of energy, one time, and it can be re-used over & over, till that original energy is spread oud very thin.Hoblit wrote:As for the Elk, I'm not sure he factored in the energy it took to make the gun he used nor the energy used to convert the animal to food. Or the neccesary energy used to preserve the food.
Here's my record label page thingie with stuff about me if you are so interested: https://greenmonkeyrecords.com/jim-of-seattle/
- Caravan Ray
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- Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love
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Re: The Oil We Eat
Thanks for postingthis Jim, I think more people "should" read it than likely will.Jim of Seattle wrote:I read this article in Harper's Magazine a few months ago now, and then I re-read it, and it's still haunting me. It's a little long, but I think it's super important for everyone in this country to understand.
Rather doubt the vast majority will manage to wade through the mire of Richard Manning's often garbledy gookified, coma-inducing prose. But it's only a portion of a vast topic that he oversimplifies in some ways and overcompliates in others.
I did, however, enjoy the irony of Manning's summary point of his stance on the topic, which made "voting twice" was an interesting analogy.
To Do Is To Be. --Socrates
To Be Is To Do. --Plato
DoBeDoBe, DoBeDo --Sinatra
I could 'see' you-- humming away (a few pill bottles on the sideboard)...But it just didn’t measure up to the insanity that is Freudian Slip...
To Be Is To Do. --Plato
DoBeDoBe, DoBeDo --Sinatra
I could 'see' you-- humming away (a few pill bottles on the sideboard)...But it just didn’t measure up to the insanity that is Freudian Slip...