Eating Petroleum

What if someone told you that the market you go to for your food was going to be closed? If you knew that the shelves in every market were going to be empty and not going to be replenished, would you think twice about your food?

People would eventually have to wonder where the food came from originally, how it was grown, and how did it got here. By 2040, we may have to ask ourselves these questions. This is because if we keep consuming food at the current rate we do, then our crude oil preserves will be exhausted by 2040. Shocking right? Most people do not realize how much oil goes into the production and delivery process of food. “The three main purposes for which oil is used worldwide are food, transport and heating. Agriculture is almost entirely dependent on reliable supplies of oil for cultivation and for pumping water, and on gas for its fertilizers; in addition, for every calorie of energy used by agriculture itself, five more are used for processing, storage and distribution.”

So, since we get all of our oil from countries in the Middle East, what would happen if they decide to keep raising the prices of oil (as they have done historically)? If oil would double or triple in price (due to scarcity & essentially their monopoly), what else do you think would double or triple? What if food was too expensive to buy for the average middle-class family? How many people would die? Would riots start? Or, would we harvest our own oil fields?

These are serious questions that we must think about. 2040 is only 38 years away, which is not far. So, people must know what we use petroleum for and that this resource is not an infinite one. How will our society (and every society) function without using any petroleum? The most rational answer is to resort to using alternative energy, along with simply using less of everything. Having healthier habits, such as walking somewhere instead of driving if the distance is close, buying organic and local foods or growing your own, consuming less material items and buying American made items. All of these small acts (of which there are many more) can help reduce the consumption of petroleum, which in the end is vital to the survival of our society.

“Almost every current human endeavor from transportation, to manufacturing, to electricity to plastics, and especially food production is inextricably intertwined with oil and natural gas supplies.” Below are only a handful of examples:

* Commercial food production is oil powered. Most pesticides are petroleum- (oil) based, and all commercial fertilisers are ammonia-based. Ammonia is produced from natural gas


* Oil based agriculture is primarily responsible for the world's population exploding from 1 billion at the middle of the 19th century to 6.3 billion at the turn of the 21st


* Oil allowed for farming implements such as tractors, food storage systems such as refrigerators, and food transport systems such as trucks


* As oil production went up, so did food production. As food production went up, so did the population. As the population went up, the demand for food went up, which increased the demand for oil. Here we go round the Mulberry bush


* Oil is also largely responsible for the advances in medicine that have been made in the last 150 years. Oil allowed for the mass production of pharmaceutical drugs, and the development of health care infrastructure such as hospitals, ambulances, roads, etc.

(Source: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/5045)