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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Last Days of America?
  • Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2005 22:24:10 -0600


Excerpt from
http://www.culturechange.org/issue20/Last%20days%20of%20America.htm
Iraqi Oil Not Enough for U.S.
Last Days of America?

“The U.S. economy runs on oil, and it does so because it is cheap and
convenient — ‘it isn’t any more complicated than that,’ an industry
official said.”

Simple but sad. Through the miracle of petroforming, competing energy
sources aren’t as versatile as petroleum. They even invented a word for
it. Johnson says,

“They’re not what the industry calls ‘fungible,’ meaning they
can’t be used for a wide spectrum of applications”.

Like producing our food.

The bad news is, when the oil supply ultimately fails, absent alternative
technologies, the world’s food supply will go with it. But when it comes
to developing alternative technologies though, in a government controlled
by former oil company kingpins, as Johnson quotes George Sterzinger,
Executive Director of the Renewable Energy Policy Project, “policies
don’t move in that direction.”

Food and energy go hand in glove. Since all our energy eggs have been put
in the oil basket, the fate of one will determine the fate of the other.
The U.S. Geological Survey has said that Oil discovery is about to peak
worldwide and absent an alternative, there will be more at stake for us
than just our bragging rights to being an advanced civilization. Starvation
may become the rule in a world without energy. Kaku says,

.............
"An 'energy-limited economy' is one where more energy cannot be had at any
price. The global economy will become 'energy-limited' once global oil
production peaks…."

And that could happen soon but when it does, whenever it does, it could
mean more trouble than just lining up at the filling station. Consider the
dependency of agriculture on oil. Hanson points out,
http://dieoff.org/page185.htm

"Food grains produced with modern, high-yield methods (including packaging
and delivery) now contain between four and ten calories of fossil fuel for
every calorie of solar energy."

Hanson adds, "It has been estimated that about four percent of the nation's
energy budget is used to grow food, while about 10 to 13 percent is needed
to put it on our plates. In other words, a staggering total of 17 percent
of America's energy budget is consumed by agriculture!"

Again citing other sources, Hanson states, "By 2040, we would need to
triple the global food supply in order to meet the basic food needs of the
eleven billion people who are expected to be alive. But doing so would
require a 1,000 percent increase in the total energy expended in food
production."

Following the peak of oil production, absent an alternative, Hanson notes,
"It will be physically impossible -- thus economically impossible -- to
provide enough net energy to agriculture”







  • [Livingontheland] Last Days of America?, Tradingpost, 06/21/2005

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