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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Eating Fossil Fuels
  • Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2003 14:45:38 -0600


Eating Fossil Fuels
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil_summary.html
by Dale Allen Pfeiffer

"What follows is most certainly the single most frightening article I have
ever read and certainly the most alarming piece that FTW has ever published."

© Copyright 2003, From The Wilderness Publications,
www.fromthewilderness.com. All Rights Reserved. This story may NOT be posted
on any Internet web site without express written permission. Contact
admin@copvcia.com. May be circulated, distributed or transmitted for
non-profit purposes only.

SUMMARY

October 3 , 2003, 1200 PDT, (FTW) -- Some months ago, concerned by a Paris
statement made by Professor Kenneth Deffeyes of Princeton regarding his
concern about the impact of Peak Oil and Gas on fertilizer production, I
tasked FTW's Contributing Editor for Energy, Dale Allen Pfeiffer to start
looking into what natural gas shortages would do to fertilizer production
costs. His investigation led him to look at the totality of food production
in the US. Because the US and Canada feed much of the world the answers have
global implications.

What follows is most certainly the single most frightening article I have
ever read and certainly the most alarming piece that FTW has ever published.
Even as we have seen CNN, Britain's Independent and Jane's Defence Weekly
acknowledge the reality of Peak Oil and Gas within the last week,
acknowledging that world oil and gas reserves are as much as 80% less than
predicted, we are also seeing how little real thinking has been devoted to
the host of crises certain to follow; at least in terms of publicly
accessible thinking.

This article is so serious in its implications that I have taken the unusual
step of underlining 26 of its key findings. I did that with the intent that
the reader treat each underlined passage as a separate and incredibly
important fact. Each one of these facts should be read and digested
separately to assimilate its importance. I found myself reading one fact and
then getting up and walking away until I could come back and (un)comfortably
read to the next.

All told, Dale Allen Pfeiffer's research and reporting confirms the worst of
FTW's suspicions about the consequences of Peak Oil and it poses serious
questions about what to do next. Not the least of these is why, in a
presidential election year, none of the candidates has even acknowledged the
problem. Thus far, it is clear that solutions for these questions, perhaps
the most important ones facing mankind, will by necessity be found by private
individuals and communities, independently of outside or governmental help.
Whether the real search for answers comes now, or as the crisis becomes
unavoidable, depends solely on us. It is also abundantly clear that fresh
water, its acquisition and delivery, is a crisis that is upon us now as
certainly as is Peak Oil and Gas.

Here are just of few of the report's key findings:

1. In the United States, 400 gallons of oil equivalents are expended annually
to feed each American (as of data provided in 1994).7 Agricultural energy
consumption is broken down as follows:

· 31% for the manufacture of inorganic fertilizer (excluding feedstock)

· 19% for the operation of field machinery

· 16% for transportation

· 13% for irrigation

· 08% for raising livestock (not including livestock feed)

· 05% for crop drying

· 05% for pesticide production

· 08% miscellaneous8

2. To give the reader an idea of the energy intensiveness of modern
agriculture, production of one kilogram of nitrogen for fertilizer requires
the energy equivalent of from 1.4 to 1.8 liters of diesel fuel. This is not
considering the natural gas feedstock.9 According to The Fertilizer Institute
(http://www.tfi.org), in the year from June 30 2001 until June 30 2002 the
United States used 12,009,300 short tons of nitrogen fertilizer.10 Using the
low figure of 1.4 liters diesel equivalent per kilogram of nitrogen, this
equates to the energy content of 15.3 billion liters of diesel fuel, or 96.2
million barrels.

3. Between 1945 and 1994, energy input to agriculture increased 4-fold while
crop yields only increased 3-fold.11 Since then, energy input has continued
to increase without a corresponding increase in crop yield. We have reached
the point of marginal returns. Yet, due to soil degradation, increased
demands of pest management and increasing energy costs for irrigation (all of
which is examined below), modern agriculture must continue increasing its
energy expenditures simply to maintain current crop yields.

4. The U.S. food system consumes ten times more energy than it produces in
food energy. This disparity is made possible by nonrenewable fossil fuel
stocks.

5. Unfortunately, if you remove fossil fuels from the equation, the daily
diet will require 111 hours of endosomatic labor per capita; that is, the
current U.S. daily diet would require nearly three weeks of labor per capita
to produce.

Michael C. Ruppert
October 3, 2003

FULL STORY HERE:

[SUBSCRIBERS CLICK HERE to read the full Story ]




  • [Livingontheland] Eating Fossil Fuels, Tradingpost, 10/06/2003

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