Message: 10 Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 09:29:09 -0600 From: Dave Williams Subject: Re: America has gone super-sized
Dave Williams wrote: “He obviously hasn't seen any of those new half-sized soft drink cans. Which, in my area, sell for a nickel more than the full-sized can. In DaveWorld, if I only wanted half a Coke, it'd be cheaper to buy the big one, drink what I wanted, and throw the rest away.” That would work fine Dave (though it’s hardly the “efficient” agricultural model you talked about), if in fact there were such a place as “away.” The problem is, there is no away. The biosphere is one enormous self-contained, and self-sustaining (with the input of solar energy) system. Burning garbage, or burying it in landfills, or dumping at the bottom of the ocean may seem like putting it “away,” but on the scale we practice it, it’s just the messy end of a linear industrial process. Nature is a closed loop system – everything gets recycled and reused and remade. Our industrial system and our agricultural system do the opposite. They had “external” inputs and generate waste products that are supposed to go away “outside” the system into some external area called the environment. But we’ve long passed the ability of the environment to handle our wastes, or supply the inputs we need on a sustainable basis. Sustainable, by the way, means capable of being continuing indefinitely, barring unforeseen changes. American agriculture is the most efficient in the world. Period. It's so efficient, farmers have oversupplied their markets until prices have dropped so much many of them are on the verge of going broke, but that's another story. Food is so cheap, most American families don't even bother to budget for it; it's just an incidental expentiture. Yeah, lots of Americans are fat. Because we're so rich, we can afford to feed out pets better than some countries can feed their own citizenry.” Dave, I am quite curious how you define efficiency? You are aware, I am certain, of the enormous agricultural subsidies the US government provides to US agriculture. And I’m not talking just the farm bill here. There are the billions of dollars spent over the previous century for building dams and other irrigation infrastructure, that give water to many farmers for free, or at prices far below market levels. There are the exemptions to labor laws for migrant farm workers, without which a lot of growers in California and the southwest would not survive. I am sure you also know how Midwest farmers have destroyed much of the fertility of the plains through practices that send billions of tons of topsoil down the Mississippi and out to sea. And then there is the dependence on fossil fuel inputs for fertilizer and fuel. None of this is sustainable, and I don’t see how it can be considered efficient. “Productive” it certainly is, in the short term, much as taking amphetamines gives you energy and focus beyond what you can normally; eventually you crash, and crash hard. By the way, the reason we can afford to feed our pets so well (if you can call mad-cow infected rendering material good feed) is that it is a by-product of our centralized industrial agricultural system, one that is now beginning to experience the consequences of its inherent unsustainability. You can fight nature all you want, but nature always wins. > All of this just confirmed a pet theory of mine, that the problem in > America is that food and gas are simply too cheap. When it costs you > $100 (Canadian) to fill your gas tank, as it does when I go to the > service station in London in my ancient VW Passat, you think twice of > buying a mastodon that gets half the mileage. “"Too cheap." ROFL. I love that kind of inverted comparisons. I can use it next time I'm in some country where everyone has rotten teeth, and comment that "American dentists work too cheap."” I’m going to guess but I think that the phrase “too cheap” here really means that the price of the fuel doesn’t reflect its true cost. It means that it’s subsidized. If gasoline prices reflected the true environmental, military/foreign policy, health, and social costs of its use, I think you’d be paying just a bit more than you’d like at the pump. But as long as I subsidize that with my tax dollars, perhaps you think that’s ok? “Public transit? That's where I can take a subway that gets me to work half an hour late every day, standing clinging to a pole while a hundred people cough germs into my face? Or is that the bus, where I try to find a seat nobody has urinated in? And either are so far from where I live, that I have to fire up the car and drive to the station?” I am sorry you have had such a poor experience with public transit. I encourage you to visit Denmark, or London, or Tokyo, or Paris, or Seattle, where you would find amazingly convenient and EFFICIENT public transportation. I live in Seattle, and my girlfriend takes the bus downtown every day to her law firm. It takes about half an hour, which is less time than driving would be at rush hour, as well as safer, and far less expensive. And for that matter, Seattle has a long way to go with public transportation, especially in terms of intermodal connections. For that try Portland, where you can catch a free downtown bus at the train station, or for $1.60 ride the MAX light rail in from the airport. Good public transportation doesn’t just happen. It requires planning, foresight, investment, and support. Perhaps you don’t want your tax dollars to help fund that? Then I’m sure you’d also be against so many taxes going to pay for highways and roads. And of course, gasoline subsidies. “Sounds like a big case of sour grapes to me. "Those SUV people just drive to work in comfort, and I have to walk or ride with freaks, out in the heat, cold, or rain.” And here I thought you were all for efficiency. Comfortable SUVs may be (though I’ve never been in one more comfortable than my VW Golf that gets oh THREE TIMES THE GAS MILEAGE AND COSTS LESS THAN HALF) but efficient they ain’t. regards, thor skov Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuel/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
