Oilfields in rapid decline....11 more years?

"Nine Percent"

By Richard Heinberg for the Post Carbon Institute

The Financial Times has leaked the results of the International Energy Agency's long-awaited study of the depletion profiles of the world's 400 largest oilfields, indicating that, "Without extra investment to raise production, the natural annual rate of output decline is 9.1 per cent."

This is a stunning figure.

Considering regular crude oil only, this means that 6.825 million barrels a day of new production capacity must come on line each year just to keep up with the aggregate natural decline rate in existing oilfields. That's a new Saudi Arabia every 18 months.

The Financial Times story goes on:

"The findings suggest the world will struggle to produce enough oil to make up for steep declines in existing fields, such as those in the North Sea, Russia and Alaska, and meet long-term demand. The effort will become even more acute as [oil] prices fall and investment decisions are delayed."

This is putting it mildly. Investment capital is being vaporized almost daily in a global deflationary bonfire of unprecedented ferocity. Oil production projects are being mothballed left and right.

Inter alia, the IEA takes the requisite swat at "peak oil theorists," who, the agency somehow still believes, are saying that the world is "running out of oil." Of course that's NOT what peak oil theorists say, but a correct summation of their position would have to be followed with a statement to the effect that, "Our research supports their position," which would be just too embarrassing.

Sadly, the IEA feels it must pull its punch even further. With adequate investment in new small oilfields and unconventional sources like tarsands, it insists, the world can still achieve higher levels of production. In other words, if the $12 trillion that vanished from the world stock markets last week were invested in new tarsands projects, then theoretically a few more years of total oil production growth could be eked out (not growth in net energy production, mind you, but in the gross—and I do mean gross—production of exotic, very expensive stuff that it's physically possible to run your car on, assuming you could afford to do so).

Of course, any realistic assessment either of the likelihood of that level of investment appearing, or of the ability of new projects to really produce a sufficient rate of flow regardless of the size of the cash infusion, would end merely in a hearty belly-laugh.

Evidently peeved about being scooped on its planned November 12 press conference roll-out of the study, the IEA has disavowed the Financial Times story. But if nine percent is even close to being the final figure, then it's absolutely clear: July 2008 was the all-time peak in world oil production. Don't expect anyone at the IEA to officially admit that fact until 2025 or so. But among those who pay attention to the evidence and the terms of the debate, further ink need not be spilled in speculation.

Peak oil is history.

Farming in the Suicide Belt

The GM genocide: Thousands of Indian farmers are committing suicide after using genetically modified crops

By Andrew Malone
Last updated at 12:48 AM on 03rd November 2008

When Prince Charles claimed thousands of Indian farmers were killing themselves after using GM crops, he was branded a scaremonger. In fact, as this chilling dispatch reveals, it's even WORSE than he feared.

The children were inconsolable. Mute with shock and fighting back tears, they huddled beside their mother as friends and neighbours prepared their father's body for cremation on a blazing bonfire built on the cracked, barren fields near their home.

As flames consumed the corpse, Ganjanan, 12, and Kalpana, 14, faced a grim future. While Shankara Mandaukar had hoped his son and daughter would have a better life under India's economic boom, they now face working as slave labour for a few pence a day. Landless and homeless, they will be the lowest of the low.

Human tragedy: A farmer and child in India's 'suicide belt'

Shankara, respected farmer, loving husband and father, had taken his own life. Less than 24 hours earlier, facing the loss of his land due to debt, he drank a cupful of chemical insecticide.

Unable to pay back the equivalent of two years' earnings, he was in despair. He could see no way out.

There were still marks in the dust where he had writhed in agony. Other villagers looked on - they knew from experience that any intervention was pointless - as he lay doubled up on the ground, crying out in pain and vomiting.

Moaning, he crawled on to a bench outside his simple home 100 miles from Nagpur in central India. An hour later, he stopped making any noise. Then he stopped breathing. At 5pm on Sunday, the life of Shankara Mandaukar came to an end.

As neighbours gathered to pray outside the family home, Nirmala Mandaukar, 50, told how she rushed back from the fields to find her husband dead. 'He was a loving and caring man,' she said, weeping quietly.

'But he couldn't take any more. The mental anguish was too much. We have lost everything.'

Shankara's crop had failed - twice. Of course, famine and pestilence are part of India's ancient story.

But the death of this respected farmer has been blamed on something far more modern and sinister: genetically modified crops.

Shankara, like millions of other Indian farmers, had been promised previously unheard of harvests and income if he switched from farming with traditional seeds to planting GM seeds instead.

Distressed: Prince Charles has set up charity Bhumi Vardaan Foundation to address the plight of suicide farmers

Beguiled by the promise of future riches, he borrowed money in order to buy the GM seeds. But when the harvests failed, he was left with spiralling debts - and no income.

So Shankara became one of an estimated 125,000 farmers to take their own life as a result of the ruthless drive to use India as a testing ground for genetically modified crops.

The crisis, branded the 'GM Genocide' by campaigners, was highlighted recently when Prince Charles claimed that the issue of GM had become a 'global moral question' - and the time had come to end its unstoppable march.

Speaking by video link to a conference in the Indian capital, Delhi, he infuriated bio-tech leaders and some politicians by condemning 'the truly appalling and tragic rate of small farmer suicides in India, stemming... from the failure of many GM crop varieties'.

Ranged against the Prince are powerful GM lobbyists and prominent politicians, who claim that genetically modified crops have transformed Indian agriculture, providing greater yields than ever before.

The rest of the world, they insist, should embrace 'the future' and follow suit.

So who is telling the truth? To find out, I travelled to the 'suicide belt' in Maharashtra state.

What I found was deeply disturbing - and has profound implications for countries, including Britain, debating whether to allow the planting of seeds manipulated by scientists to circumvent the laws of nature.

For official figures from the Indian Ministry of Agriculture do indeed confirm that in a huge humanitarian crisis, more than 1,000 farmers kill themselves here each month.

Simple, rural people, they are dying slow, agonising deaths. Most swallow insecticide - a pricey substance they were promised they would not need when they were coerced into growing expensive GM crops.

It seems that many are massively in debt to local money-lenders, having over-borrowed to purchase GM seed.

Pro-GM experts claim that it is rural poverty, alcoholism, drought and 'agrarian distress' that is the real reason for the horrific toll.

But, as I discovered during a four-day journey through the epicentre of the disaster, that is not the full story.

Death seeds: A Greenpeace protester sprays milk-based paint on a Monsanto research soybean field near Atlantic, Iowa

In one small village I visited, 18 farmers had committed suicide after being sucked into GM debts. In some cases, women have taken over farms from their dead husbands - only to kill themselves as well.

Latta Ramesh, 38, drank insecticide after her crops failed - two years after her husband disappeared when the GM debts became too much.

She left her ten-year-old son, Rashan, in the care of relatives. 'He cries when he thinks of his mother,' said the dead woman's aunt, sitting listlessly in shade near the fields.

Village after village, families told how they had fallen into debt after being persuaded to buy GM seeds instead of traditional cotton seeds.

The price difference is staggering: £10 for 100 grams of GM seed, compared with less than £10 for 1,000 times more traditional seeds.

But GM salesmen and government officials had promised farmers that these were 'magic seeds' - with better crops that would be free from parasites and insects.

Indeed, in a bid to promote the uptake of GM seeds, traditional varieties were banned from many government seed banks.

The authorities had a vested interest in promoting this new biotechnology. Desperate to escape the grinding poverty of the post-independence years, the Indian government had agreed to allow new bio-tech giants, such as the U.S. market-leader Monsanto, to sell their new seed creations.

In return for allowing western companies access to the second most populated country in the world, with more than one billion people, India was granted International Monetary Fund loans in the Eighties and Nineties, helping to launch an economic revolution.

But while cities such as Mumbai and Delhi have boomed, the farmers' lives have slid back into the dark ages.

Though areas of India planted with GM seeds have doubled in two years - up to 17 million acres - many famers have found there is a terrible price to be paid.

Far from being 'magic seeds', GM pest-proof 'breeds' of cotton have been devastated by bollworms, a voracious parasite.

Nor were the farmers told that these seeds require double the amount of water. This has proved a matter of life and death.

With rains failing for the past two years, many GM crops have simply withered and died, leaving the farmers with crippling debts and no means of paying them off.

Having taken loans from traditional money lenders at extortionate rates, hundreds of thousands of small farmers have faced losing their land as the expensive seeds fail, while those who could struggle on faced a fresh crisis.

When crops failed in the past, farmers could still save seeds and replant them the following year.

But with GM seeds they cannot do this. That's because GM seeds contain so- called 'terminator technology', meaning that they have been genetically modified so that the resulting crops do not produce viable seeds of their own.

As a result, farmers have to buy new seeds each year at the same punitive prices. For some, that means the difference between life and death.

Take the case of Suresh Bhalasa, another farmer who was cremated this week, leaving a wife and two children.

As night fell after the ceremony, and neighbours squatted outside while sacred cows were brought in from the fields, his family had no doubt that their troubles stemmed from the moment they were encouraged to buy BT Cotton, a geneticallymodified plant created by Monsanto.

'We are ruined now,' said the dead man's 38-year-old wife. 'We bought 100 grams of BT Cotton. Our crop failed twice. My husband had become depressed. He went out to his field, lay down in the cotton and swallowed insecticide.'

Villagers bundled him into a rickshaw and headed to hospital along rutted farm roads. 'He cried out that he had taken the insecticide and he was sorry,' she said, as her family and neighbours crowded into her home to pay their respects. 'He was dead by the time they got to hospital.'

Asked if the dead man was a 'drunkard' or suffered from other 'social problems', as alleged by pro-GM officials, the quiet, dignified gathering erupted in anger. 'No! No!' one of the dead man's brothers exclaimed. 'Suresh was a good man. He sent his children to school and paid his taxes.

'He was strangled by these magic seeds. They sell us the seeds, saying they will not need expensive pesticides but they do. We have to buy the same seeds from the same company every year. It is killing us. Please tell the world what is happening here.'

Monsanto has admitted that soaring debt was a 'factor in this tragedy'. But pointing out that cotton production had doubled in the past seven years, a spokesman added that there are other reasons for the recent crisis, such as 'untimely rain' or drought, and pointed out that suicides have always been part of rural Indian life.

Officials also point to surveys saying the majority of Indian farmers want GM seeds - no doubt encouraged to do so by aggressive marketing tactics.

During the course of my inquiries in Maharastra, I encountered three 'independent' surveyors scouring villages for information about suicides. They insisted that GM seeds were only 50 per cent more expensive - and then later admitted the difference was 1,000 per cent.

(A Monsanto spokesman later insisted their seed is 'only double' the price of 'official' non-GM seed - but admitted that the difference can be vast if cheaper traditional seeds are sold by 'unscrupulous' merchants, who often also sell 'fake' GM seeds which are prone to disease.)

With rumours of imminent government compensation to stem the wave of deaths, many farmers said they were desperate for any form of assistance. 'We just want to escape from our problems,' one said. 'We just want help to stop any more of us dying.'

Prince Charles is so distressed by the plight of the suicide farmers that he is setting up a charity, the Bhumi Vardaan Foundation, to help those affected and promote organic Indian crops instead of GM.

India's farmers are also starting to fight back. As well as taking GM seed distributors hostage and staging mass protests, one state government is taking legal action against Monsanto for the exorbitant costs of GM seeds.

This came too late for Shankara Mandauker, who was 80,000 rupees (about £1,000) in debt when he took his own life. 'I told him that we can survive,' his widow said, her children still by her side as darkness fell. 'I told him we could find a way out. He just said it was better to die.'

But the debt does not die with her husband: unless she can find a way of paying it off, she will not be able to afford the children's schooling. They will lose their land, joining the hordes seen begging in their thousands by the roadside throughout this vast, chaotic country.

Cruelly, it's the young who are suffering most from the 'GM Genocide' - the very generation supposed to be lifted out of a life of hardship and misery by these 'magic seeds'.

Here in the suicide belt of India, the cost of the genetically modified future is murderously high.

Mercury and Autism and.................?

Another argument for radically increasing the amount of carbon sequestration in soils. Beyond reducing atmospheric CO2, it helps bind toxic elements so they cannot be taken up by plants. The following maps should be a startling wake up call. Click the maps for a larger view.

Rain, Autism, and Mercury
(click title for full story)

...a recent study of federal data showed that the percentage of Americans with detectable levels of inorganic mercury in their blood increased eightfold between 2000 and 2004.

These are the same years that we see burgeoning levels of mercury being spewed into the atmosphere from industrializing areas of the world, particularly in China and other Asian countries.

The US Government has detected "mercury plumes" that carry the dangerous neurotoxin in great quantities across the Pacific and, within five days, found them hovering just offshore of San Diego, California. (See Map HERE)

At a recent vaccine forum at Hackensack University Medical Center, in New Jersey, I made this observation, and mentioned that the mercury carried aloft through the atmosphere will come down in the form of rain along the west coast or, during drier periods, continue eastward until it finds wetter, rainier parts of the country, where it is washed to the ground.

Economic Rape of the whole planet by (who else, but) the Bush gang

Voters are rightly furious at the proposal to spend $700 billion that the government doesn't have, just to bail out Wall Street bankers who created the current economic crisis in the first place.

But did you know about the trillions of dollars the Federal Reserve is pumping into the system on top of that?

Or the trillions missing from the Pentagon?

Do you know what the real cost of the bailout of Wall Street may end up being?

A Solar Assisted Rickshaw for Relocalized Transport

We have seen eco-cabs, electric motor-assisted rickshaws in Toronto; Now London's Solarlab, the team that brought us the Solar boat that Bonnie sailed on the Serpentine, adds solar. "The solar generatior will create 80% of the total power needed to drive the vehicle, while the remaining 20% will be provided by the drivers' pedal-power. The physical exertion needed will be dramatically less than that of even a standard bicycle, much less than a traditional rickshaw, allowing any driver, not just athletes, to drive the vehicle."

Found at Treehugger

Conservation of angular momentum for fun and fitness!!

I had never heard of this thing until I stumbled upon it today. It's been around for several years. Looks like a lot of fun. I want one.

Trikke (pronounced trike) three-wheeled cambering vehicles are human powered machines that utilize Trikke Tech’s patented 3CV technology to allow a rider to propel a chainless, pedal-less device forward without ever touching foot to ground. This elegantly simple construct provides a stable 3-point platform that leans into the turn with the rider while all three wheels remain in contact with the ground. A rider may reach speeds of up to 18 mph on flat ground, ride 50 miles in one day, and climb the steepest of hills (with practice!).

Trikke’s design allows the rider to naturally engage his entire body throughout the ride. Legs are active for balancing and shock-absorption and arms punch for power-thrusts and hang on for stability and control. The Trikke 3-wheeler allows you, the rider, to feel the miracle of your own body and mind working in graceful unison. The bi-products of the ride are joy, health, fitness and a renewed appreciation for yourself and your life.

Trikke cambering vehicles allow a rider to utilize a fundamental physics principle known as the Conservation of Angular Momentum. While traveling on a slalom-like path, a rider moves his center of gravity (his mass) from left to right (for example) while leaning the vehicle into a right turn; this movement of the rider’s mass is towards the center of the turn, thus decreasing the radius of an imaginary circle which is formed around the center point of the rider’s turn. This movement of mass to the center of the circle acts in the same way that an ice-skater increases her velocity if she pulls in her arms (decreasing her radius) while she is spinning on the ice.
Because of the vehicle’s design, a rider can learn to maximize the velocity generated from making each turn and then transfer that momentum into the next turn, and so on and so on. Propulsion can be so effortless that it feels like magic, or as strenuous as a full-blown sprint. Your choice.

In the simplest of terms, you rock & roll to make a cambering vehicle go. An experienced rider uses the entire body in a gracefully coordinated motion that leans the vehicle into each turn and transfers the momentum of each forward thrust into the next turn and the next. A trikke ride combines the utility of human powered transportation with the thrill of carving deep surf and ski style turns. Like in other carving sports, everyone develops their own unique, individual riding style. Each ride becomes a personal expression session.

Click the image below for more info. Be aware, these are so popular that the manufacturer can barely keep up.

Change We Need!!

How Peak Oil Changed My Life

By Aaron Wissner

11 January, 2008
Countercurrents.org
Peak oil changed my life by altering my expectations and hopes for the future.

I was once a techno-science lover. I looked to the future, and saw technology changing the world, and solving all of its problems: outposts on the moon and Mars, a cure for all diseases and maybe even a cure for death, certainly much longer life spans, and the end to war and poverty. Yes, it was a fantastic vision, supported by the incredible progress of recent years, of men on the moon, the development of the internet, and all those technological marvels and scientific discoveries that seemed to be increasing at an unstoppable rate. I dreamed of journeying into space, traveling to every country, living well past my hundredth birthday, driving a 100 mile per gallon car, and having a better and happier life thanks to incredible new advancements of science and technology.

Then, I found out about peak oil, and my life was divided into the time before, and the time after. This epiphany was more lasting and dramatic than the ones that I thought I'd experienced only a few years earlier. One shock was my discovery of the cruelty and harms of industrialized agriculture and factory farms, and my complicity in these industries. The other, as I survived what I fully expected to be a fatal car crash. After each shocking realization, I thought to myself, "Now I truly understand. My eyes are open. My life is changed forever."

And indeed, these first two events did change me. To respond to the cruelties our civilization inflicts upon animals, I became vegan swore off eating any animal products, and embarked on a voracious campaign to educate myself to the scope of the problem. After my near-fatal car accident, I began looking at my future differently, decided that I would start getting involved, and making my life count: lest I find myself dying without really having done anything of lasting value or note.

Peak oil set me straight. Those prior epiphanies were simply preparing me for the big one: that civilization as I knew it might very well end, not only in my lifetime, but within the decade. What I saw looming ahead was the very real possibility of the collapse of the global economy. This vision included the loss of all value of money, the loss of all jobs, the loss of all fuels and the transportation system they support, the loss of electricity, and the loss of the entire food distribution system. To me, societal collapse was a previously unthinkable scenario; that we may have painted ourselves in the corner, and that the paint was about to catch on fire.

Everywhere around me, I began to see our petroleum dependence: my morning shower, my imported clothes, my breakfast cereal, the fuel in my car, the maintenance of the roads, the lights at home and at work, etc... It all depends on oil.

Soon after my peak oil awakening, while driving to visit family, we drove through the nearest mega-city. The consumption of energy blinded me; the lights of cars, and buildings, and billboards... the airplanes coming and going... the trains carrying people… the trucks carrying food and goods... Everything depends on fuel, and that fuel is oil.

As with the earlier discovery of animal cruelty, I knew I had to find the solution. With factory farms, I could simply become vegan and my soul was absolved of my past evil deeds. No, I couldn't stop animal cruelty, but at least I could wash my hands of my direct complicity. For peak oil, a solution I sought, and what I found was not pleasant: civilization may not have a chance.

This concept was hard to swallow: no matter how desperately we wanted to switch to renewable fuels, there simply was not enough time, money, energy, or raw materials to do it. Yes, we could transition a portion of our electricity supply to renewables, with some new generation from the sun and the wind. Yes, we could build some electric vehicles, but not enough… not nearly enough… to prevent the collapse of the entire economic system.

Upon that realization, I recognized that I was going to have to change myself. I needed to prepare, not only for the possibility of a rapid collapse of the system, but also for the possibility that this descent would take place gradually, over many years, or even decades. To prepare for a rapid collapse, I started doing things and buying things that would help me live apart from the global system, at least for a time: a new pantry stocked with food, containers for water, extra gasoline, extra heating fuel, insulating the windows and door, preparing a large garden, etc. To get ready for a slow decline, I started planning a zero-energy home, to be built on an ample piece of fertile land, near a stream or lake, away from the huge populations of the cities.

Peak oil now informs everything I do. It tells the story of a future of great challenge and difficulty, for which I must be prepared.

Peak oil shortens my time horizon. No longer do I worry about my son's college or my own retirement. Now I worry about being able to provide him with the bare necessities. And I wonder, will money be worth anything at all by the time I reach retirement age?

Peak oil informs all of my purchases. I always ask myself, would this be useful during a rapid collapse? How about during a slow decline? If neither, why buy it?

Peak oil alters the way I think about the future. It makes me scoff at the rosy prognostications of our many societal sages; well-paid, kind of heart, but tragically uninformed.

Peak oil drives me to share what I know, and to go further, to illuminate the fundamental failure of our global culture to plan and prepare for its own future. The bleak reality is this: peak oil is not really about the decline of our most precious energy resource. Peak oil is one symptom of our civilization’s inability to find and follow a cultural vision of sustainability.

Aaron Wissner has taught public school students for sixteen years. He is the founder of the international Local Future Network, a non-profit educational organization dedicated to saving Earth through cultural change. In his spare time, he http://valuesystem.livejournal.com writes articles organizes education events, and gives presentations. Aaron lives in Michigan with his wife Kimberly and his newborn son Michael.

Organic Transitions: Beyond the Gloom & Doom of Economic Depression, Climate Change, & Peak Oil

• By Ronnie Cummins
  Organic Consumers Association, October 14, 2008
  Straight to the Source
  
  

OCA is happy to announce a new grassroots-powered campaign called Organic Transitions, inspired in part by the UK's fast-growing Transition Towns [see link list] movement. Organic Transitions is designed to mobilize organic consumers and local communities to start planning and implementing “transition” strategies so as to survive and thrive in the turbulent times ahead, with organic food and farming providing the healthy cornerstone for a new, more localized and sustainable green economy.

First the bad, or shall we say the really bad, news. Not since the Great Depression have Americans been challenged by anything comparable to the current unfolding disaster: economic meltdown, global warming, climate chaos, escalating energy and resource costs, looming shortages, endless war, biodiversity erosion, and deteriorating public health—metastasized and abetted by a corporate elite and indentured federal government that apparently doesn’t know what to do, or, worse, doesn’t care. Even with likely regime change on November 4, we are in very deep trouble, according to leading scientists, economists, agronomists, and public health experts.

Fortunately a critical mass of people are waking up to the fact that we must get organized and find holistic solutions, not mere band-aids, for our crisis. Millions of us are heartened by the indisputable fact that organic, green, commonsense solutions for all of our life-or-death problems are at hand, including appropriate technology and innovative public policy and legislation. We don’t have to wait for Washington bureaucrats or corporate marketers to tell us what to do. We can join together with our fellow citizens and begin the absolutely essential process of organizing Organic Transitions committees and campaigns in our local areas, starting with local organic food buying clubs, house parties, and study and action circles.

Times are indeed grim and frightening, but certainly not hopeless. We still have a strategic window of opportunity to take back control over our political, cultural, and economic institutions; to create millions of urban and rural green jobs; to transform our educational systems; and to make a smooth transition from fossil fuels, climate chaos, and resource wars to a renewable, peaceful, solar-based agriculture and economy. But time is of the essence.

There is no longer any doubt that we must quickly move away from fossil fuels and greenhouse gas pollution if we are to avoid climate catastrophe. Likewise there is no doubt that we are quickly running out of cheap oil, and other essential resources such as water, forests, wetlands, and plant and animal biodiversity. You are likely familiar with the term “Peak Oil”, the notion that global oil production has peaked and will now become inexorably more expensive and scarce, even as global demand continues to rise. What you may not realize is that we stand on the cusp of Peak Everything, where nearly all of our essential natural resources are reaching their limits.

We obviously can no longer afford trillion-dollar bailouts for Wall Street speculators, nor trillion-dollar wars for oil and empire in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is temporarily enough food, fiber, and fuel on the planet to feed, clothe, and shelter everyone (that is, if these necessities are distributed equitably), but the days of fossil fuel-intensive, chemical-intensive agriculture, transportation, utilities, and housing are drawing to an end. Natural gas-derived chemical fertilizers and petroleum-based pesticides, transportation, and processing are absolutely essential to supercharge America’s current system of industrialized and globalized food and farming, but as economists point out, these inputs will be literally unaffordable within a decade. Chemical fertilizer and diesel costs alone have gone up 80% in the last two years, with global food costs rising comparably. Gasoline in the U.S. now costs about $3 dollars a gallon (over $10 a gallon in some EU nations), while natural gas for heating is $2.50. Multiply these costs by two over the next couple of years, by four over the next five years, and by ten or so over the next decade and you get the picture.

There’s a silver lining in the collapse of our energy-intensive, chemical-intensive, hyper-consumerist society. We’re likely to be a lot happier and healthier after we make the Organic Transitions we need. Most of us will not be making as much money as we once did, or buying as many consumer products, but as we green and relocalize our economy and our politics, we’re likely to be a lot healthier, less alienated, and stressed-out. We’ll certainly be driving and flying less, and millions more of us will be involved in organic gardening and farming and other green jobs, but OCA’s belief is that we’ll likely be happier and more at peace with ourselves, our local communities, and the Earth. Please join up with the OCA as active participants in our Organic Transitions campaign. And please support us financially as we move beyond the gloom and doom of the present crisis.

Obama cites Michael Pollan article

Glad to hear that Barack has people on his team keeping him abreast of critical food issues. Here are Obama's comments based upon his reading of Pollan's article:

"I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That's just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board."