Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[firekeeper@netscape.net]

Paul is right about the hidden costs of coal use. Litterally thousands of forrest and farm acres and hundreds of miles of water resources are being lost every year in the US alone to caol production, not only in the destruction of the mountains that the coal interests control but also throughout the region, down stream of these horrible sites.  the economic and environmental costs are being deliberately hidden by those sam,e interest but National Geographic has done a good article and there are many on line.

 

http://www.mountainjusticesummer.org/facts/steps.php

 

This has been the real problem with deregulation, and corporate interest lobbying, Small family and subsistence farms are really really the most efficient, because everything that can be used for more than one purpose is;  The cattle that are used to work in the farm are also used to fertilize and to feed the humans.  With deregulation came the increased ability for these unethical corps to hide enourmous costs by simply shuffling them off on everyone else.  Before the war, The costs that could be tracked down for the aquisition, production, protection, transprtation and use of Petro-products were over $12 per gallon but we were getting charged only about $2, of which the petro-corps were taking in mostly profit.  That means that the taxes we pay went to cover all the rest, and it still hasn't covered all of the environmental damage.  I lived in Corpus Christi when one of the major rigs in the gulf was hit by a tanker, it nearly destroyed much of our aqua businesses like shrimping.  Most of the families that lost their businesses never recovered and the people that did get money, got that money from the gov't not from the oil co's.

 

This sort of thing keeps happening with centralization, with the concentration of a necessary resource into a few hands. This is one of the biggest arguements I have against ethanol, it puts both petro-interests and agro-corps holding the reins again and we have already had ample evidence that that is just going to ruin us further.  On the other hand, decentralized energy and food production puts those of us who depend entirely on the future of the land (and remember that fact) taking care of the land that feeds us.

 

Yours, Pego