Alt OP #44 Sustainability

As some of you may have gathered from last weeks article I’m on my sustainability kick again. Oh, and yes, that really was an opinion piece. My opinion being that Mr. Fukuoka has the right idea and that his ideas, modified to fit our climate and land will work here.

Yeah, I know. He doesn't use any of the big machinery we Americans are so fond of. No big combine rolling down the rows of corn, wheat, or even rice and spitting out tons of grain into a big ol’ dump truck rolling beside it. Just a lot of folks swinging scythes as they walk through a field, then maybe using a simple machine to thresh and gather up the grain before they haul the straw back into the field.

Sounds down right primitive. But isn't one of the problems we have right now in our nice high tech, big machine civilization unemployment? That big combine only takes one man, or woman to run it. Only one person is needed to run the truck that follows beside to catch the grain. Yeah, I know. You also need “behind the scenes” types to fuel, maintain, build, and make parts for those machines. But other things are going on back there too. Things that are, going to help bring us all down. The environment is being mauled to get the materials (metals and such) and the energy (oil, coal) to build and run those big machines. Then there is the literal killing off of every life form but the crop being grown that is done when you use pesticides, herbicides and, yes, even chemical fertilizers. This leaves you with dead, sterile soil that can’t grow anything unless it does get those chemical fertilizers. Guess where almost all of those things come from, folks.

 Oil. And oil is not going to be getting cheep ever again. Ever.

As to why oil isn’t ever going to be cheep again, I’ll leave that to you all out there. I believe it is simply because we've already pulled out all the oil that is available and that if we want more we will just have to wait the geologic eons it takes to make more. I do know that a lot of you out there think that there is this big stock pile somewhere that the country could run on for years. To which I reply. So?

So what if there is a big ol’ pot of oil stashed out there somewhere that the country could run on for what? Two years? Three? Maybe even five. Do you all realize how much oil that would be?! Just think people.
Think about how many cars are on the road right now, how many big diesel trucks are hauling produce, material, finished products or even out there fighting fires. Then there are the airplanes, the ships, the lawn mowers and the weed eaters as well as the chain saws and the golf carts. Do you really believe there is
enough room anywhere to store that much oil without someone knowing about it and blabbing?

Maybe back during simpler times. Not now. Remember Wiki-leaks. But let’s just suppose there IS such a pot of stored up oil. Now lets suppose further that we go ahead and use it. Then what? We’ll have one to five more years of living just like we are now before the whole civilization we've built on the availability of cheep, plentiful, energy falls down around our ears and on our heads. Sad thing is a lot of the stuff we think can save us, those big, humongous, wind generators, and the solar panels to make electricity when the wind doesn't blow, guess what is needed to make those?
 Yep. Oil. Cheep energy.

Might oughta think about putting in an all season, organic garden. While you can.