Stingray: Conservative Christian News and Commentary
Posted on 03/26/2006 9:37:59 AM PST by Nachum
Please join me for breakfast. It's time to fuel up again.
On the table in my small Berkeley apartment this morning is a healthy-looking little meal -- a bowl of imported McCann's Irish oatmeal topped with Cascadian Farms organic frozen raspberries, and a cup of Peet's Fair Trade Blend coffee. Like most of us, I prepare my breakfast at home, and the ingredients for this one probably cost me about $1.25. (If I went to a cafe in downtown Berkeley, I'd probably have to add $6 more, plus tip, for the same.)
My breakfast fuels me up with about 400 calories, and it satisfies me. So for just over a buck and half and an hour spent reading the morning paper in my own kitchen, I'm energized for the next few hours. But before I put spoon to cereal, what if I consider this bowl of oatmeal porridge (to which I've just added a little butter, milk and a shake of salt) from a different perspective. Say, a Saudi Arabian one.
Then what you'd be likely to see -- what's really there, just hidden from our view (not to say our taste buds) -- is about 4 ounces of crude oil. Throw in those luscious red raspberries and that cup of java (an additional 3 ounces of crude), and don't forget those modest additions of butter, milk and salt (1 more ounce), and you've got a tiny bit of the Middle East right here in my kitchen.
Now, let's drill a little deeper into this breakfast. Just where does this tiny gusher of oil actually come from? (We'll let this oil represent all fossil fuels in my breakfast, including natural gas and coal.)
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I've just called the Compassion Corps. They will arrive directly at your doorstep, eat your buttererd popcorn, confiscate your TV, and take you to the nearest reeducation camp. Serves you right!
No problem as long as they arrive AFTER the car races.
Stingray: Conservative Christian News and Commentary
If the Greenies would shop at Walmart, instead of Costco, their foodstuffs would be more locally grown.
If Chad Heeter would confine himself to eating fresh fruits in season for his region, and if he could start his own balcony box garden, then he could really ensure that he is only consuming local produce.
But are the residents of Berkeley
progressive enough to use
solar ovens?
If you were to ask this guy he would probably tell you it is good to make ethanol and forget all about his little article about food and oil.
Good on you. We call it Critchfield oatmeal for the obvious reason and all in-laws get a can on joining the family.
If you run the numbers a different way you will see that the total equivalent amount of oil to meet the average human need in energy each day is roughly 2% of the total energy used in the United States per day.
To put it a different way, you could feed 15 people all walking 40 miles on the same amount of edible oil as your VW diesel powered Rabbit uses to go 40 miles.
Of course the Rabbit goes 10 times faster.
To be very frank I don't see the whining that other posters are complaining about. What this writer states is simply fact: even trying to be eco-friendly is impossible, for everything we do and touch requires the consumption of fossil fuels. Even if the writer ate nothing but grains grown in the US, the combines required to harvest it, the petrochemicals used to make it grow and keep insects from infesting it, and the trucks used to take it to market, demand the comsumption of fossil fuels. Where is the whine? It's true.
But of course, the only solution is for us to let Mother Nature be.
Competition for scarce resources? We produce more agricultural goods on LESS farmland than we have ever done in our history! There is a worldwide agricultural surplus for Crissake!
With all due respect, the comment was in reference to the oil consumed to produce and transport these products which is a scarce resource. You would have had to have read the entire article to make an informed comment on the author's premise and my reply.
Also, I used the term in its economics definition..."'Resources scarcity' is defined as there being a difference between what people desire and the demand for a good. Thus, a good is scarce if people would consume more of it if it were free."
Thus, agricultural goods are scarce resources.
Again...reading helps.
Oh, God, not that! Could we do some more research to make sure the next spray we deploy will kill on contact? I can't abide the thought of even whinier liberals.
Personally, I prefer free range oats, sown in the wild by someone like Lazamataz. The oats are stone ground in water powered mill and use no oil at all. Even the mill bearings are water cooled and use no grease.
They are pretty expensive as a result of the need to range all over the country to collect the oats.
I just discovered this article. I used to be really good friends with Chad in HS. What a nutjob. I have not seen him in 15 years.
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