A Zen-Like Day

I get a 3 day weekend and how do I decide to kick it off? By sorting out white office paper from "other" paper and manila folders in an effort to recycle this 5-year-old crap that's been sitting around our house for too long!

And people think I'm funny because I now work almost 100% paperless. Never do I want to go down that road again.

This is what it looks like when you go through 5 or 6 boxes of files and separate out the white office paper from other paper. Pulling out the white paper was like reliving the 2 years of time I spent working for my own advertising agency.

I got all the white paper neatly packed into boxes. One piece of paper is almost weightless. Several thousand pieces of almost weightless pieces of paper is absurdly heavy.

I also got all the manila folders packed tightly in a box. Each one of those represents a television station in the US! Each had a label on it.

What a waste of time that was. We made labels, we created documents tailored for our business, we printed documents, faxed documents, got signed copies of our documents faxed back to us, and all that shit got filed away.

I loaded up the car with all the stuff and headed out to the Eco Depot recycling center and feeling quite pleased with myself for spending over 2 hours getting this properly prepared for recycling rather than just dumping it in a landfill.

The attendant at the recycling center took one look at the paper and said, "Oh, that all has staples in it. We can't recycle it with staples."

So it had to go in as garbage. The huge machine that processes the garbage was about 10 or 12 feet below the deck where I was standing. As I began to empty my boxes directly into this rather dizzying square "hole" and hoping I wouldn't fall into it, I realized that I was taking all my delicate sorting work and mixing it all back together again. White paper, colored paper, cardboard, and manila folders suddenly became reunited.

And I had to pay $13.50 for the privilege.

I could have more easily put all this in my dumpster at home although it might have taken a series of weekly pickups until it was all disposed of, so I guess it was worth the $13.50 to get it done all at once.

But this really has me a bit disturbed by the realities of recycling.

At the end of my wasted day, the Tot was happy to have an empty box.

Monday Morning Musings

I'm not sure when I started obsessing about life and how quickly it seems to pass as I get older. It has definitely been a bigger blip on my radar since I turned 40.

When you are 20, you feel immortal and the world awaits you. Yet, if you can manage to make it through four consecutive average cat life cycles from that point, you are indeed lucky.

The unfortunate event on March 1st when I broke a number of bones in my face, the resulting surgery a bit more than 2 weeks later, and then my 50th birthday a month later, have all had an impact on how I view life. It seems so much more fragile now than it ever has before. The reality is that any of our seemingly stable lives can be turned upside down in the blink of an eye. Moreover, it is inevitable. The older we get, the greater the odds that we are on the cusp of a shattering event.

This understanding, which bears down upon me without my approval, is truly maddening sometimes. I see other people carrying on with their happy lives in what appears to be blissful ignorance of reality. I wish I could be like them. But are they all really unaware? Do they just have a more effective method of dealing with it and suppressing the associated emotions and anxiety?

We spend our lives gathering stuff: material possessions, friendships, and memories. We stuff our brains full of music, films, books, travels, sports scores, work experiences, Excel spreadsheet functions, HTML code, user IDs, passwords, credit card numbers, and expiration dates.

Our closets are packed with clothing and boxes in which stuff was delivered. Most people can't even use their garages because they are overflowing with possessions. And this is a relatively new phenomenon. My mother still remembers a time when she only had what was truly needed. She remembers her father telling the story of the first time he ever saw a motor car. He was so frightened he hid in a ditch. Running water and electricity inside the home were new luxuries, and still out of reach for many.

In that short span of time we have evolved into a people who have been born into such luxuries and take them for granted. We no longer need to hunt and gather for survival. Millions of us sit in a chair each day, tapping our fingers on plastic to manipulate data. And millions of us are paid well for it. But not in cash.

Someone else is tapping their fingers on plastic buttons to transfer "money" from one place to another place. When my place receives this transfer, I can then tap my fingers to move it from my place to the place which owns my house. Never having to lay eyes upon currency is a luxury.

I buy my food by swiping a piece of plastic through a chunk of plastic. That's how I get my groceries, my housewares, and fuel for my car so I can drive around and buy all this stuff. Quite amazing.

I don't even need to leave my house for a lot of the stuff I get. Tap tap tap on the plastic, select something you desire on a screen, type in a few numbers which gives instructions to computers to transfer a bunch of numbers from one place to another, and voila! A few days later, stuff comes to your door in a brown truck. And all of this is achieved by data passing through the air, or wires, at the speed of light.

Even in my lifetime, I remember how labor-intensive it was to gather information. I actually had to get up, get in the car, and drive to another building which housed thousands of books. I had to flip through drawers packed with thousands of little cards that contained directions to find the book which would contain the information I needed. And that was all well and good as long as someone else hadn't borrowed the book. There was even a human there to help you, if you needed it. Free of charge!

Now it is possible to gather data on a little chunk of plastic that you can carry with you, and tap on, or so I've read on this big piece of plastic I'm staring at as I tap these thoughts on my plastic buttons -- soon to be available for reading by anyone in the world fortunate enough to have a similar plastic device and viewing screen. You can even do this while you are driving around, buying shit you don't need, and swiping plastic to pay for it. Amazing!

What a world we live in, however briefly against the longer timeline of existence.

In this world of wonder and achievement, I am truly baffled that I can be so depressed. I don't just see the beauty and the wonder; I see everything. While this world in which we live would be unrecognizable to my grandparents in their youth, a few things haven't changed at all. Things like greed.

If we were truly immortal, or even if we could live 500 years, or 300 years, I could understand the concept of greed more easily than I can from my perspective of life at 50.

I am truly aghast that greed remains as pervasive and unevolved as it is. Greed is what compels us to do absurd things like drilling a mile deep -- underwater -- for fuel to power these moving boxes of steel we need in order to drive to a bigger, fixed-position box and punch plastic all day so that we can acquire a bunch of other (much smaller) numbers which get shifted around in the ether. After accruing enough of these numbers we call our own, we can drive around and buy stuff.

Greed is what allowed us to come here, take this land, and call it ours. Greed made us establish arbitrary and artificial boundaries, staking poles in the ground, adorned with absolutely meaningless pieces of patterned cloth in order to have what is essentially a meaningless and hollow identity.

Now that we have that, greed is driving us to destroy it. And we're no longer content to take advantage of people from outside our artificial boundaries with identifies different from our own; we seem eager to screw the life out of anything and everything we get our hands on in order to get more personal numbers stacked in our favor, whether it's our neighbors, the fields which grow the food to keep us alive, the water we need to quench our thirst, or the air we breathe.

We seem to have become completely uninterested in the numbers of our brothers and sisters who have had their equally short and fragile lives ended sooner than necessary by greed.

If nothing else, life is about adjusting and adapting to changes. Life is about caring and understanding. Life is about overcoming selfishness and greed. Life is about understanding that we are of the world and not vice-versa, and behaving accordingly. Failure to comprehend these simple facts is criminal. And we seem to be a nation and a world of criminals.

I have my own issues with comprehension. I cannot comprehend how, in this wondrous short time of bounty and achievement, so many of us cannot be content and enjoy our own personal experiences. Instead, we feel a necessity to exploit and control others, and often to focus on the most asinine of restrictions, while allowing all manner of other profligate atrocities to run rampant. I cannot comprehend how this path of greed we have chosen can be sustained much longer, nor can I comprehend how those of us who never ponder the ramifications of our enormous footprint will deal with the reality when it finally does deliver the ultimate smackdown.

On this day, arbitrarily set aside by some authority, in which we are asked to remember those who have fallen (some of whom still were not even allowed to be open and honest about who they were), and as I also include those who gave up a portion of their life, perhaps the best portion of it (and in many cases, a limb or two, if not their entire life), in their gift of service to this relatively recent nation of artificial boundaries conceived of, and awash in, greed, I have to ask myself if it was a truly necessary and noble cause, or simply a more short-sighted exploitation to fulfill a craven lust before casting them aside like spent fuel rods.

Sorry. I know I can come across as a major downer sometimes. But I think a lot. And I will honor our veterans today by saying we need to do everything in our power to stop creating so many of them for unjust causes. Those numbers (a trillion or two) piled up in someone's account which were used to fund the recent and ongoing wars could have been better transferred elsewhere in our relentless pursuit of stuff.

Live and let live, gently, and with responsible awareness and compassion.

Clean Coal

Fuck the lobbyists for the "clean coal" industry.

Here you go.

The wet gray sludge buried about 400 acres six feet deep. One house was torn from its foundations, and 11 other homes were damaged and evacuated. No injuries or fatalities have been reported.

TVA estimates that the cleanup could take weeks to complete and says long-term plans are being developed. Environmentalists warn that fly ash contains toxins - mercury, arsenic, and lead among others - that could seep into the ground and flow downriver.

Lovely. Merry Christmas, Tennessee!

Segway (Segue)

We, being the marketing and advertising geniuses that we are, think Segway is a mahhhvelous name for an instrument of transportation of the low-oil variety. Whereas the so-called "hybrid" vehicles are not all they are cracked up to be.



So it is with great fanfare that I announce....

We're going to do something about it. From now on, when I see a Hummer accelerating past me on the road rushing to a red light, I'm going to rear-end it. Hard.

Because I'm sick of this shit and I'm NOT going to take it ANYMORE!!

When Green Turns Shit Brown

I don't know about the rest of you but I'm getting a little tired of hearing green this and green that these days.

Hey, I'm all for trying to promote green living, energy savings and whatnot. It's the whatnot I suppose that's getting on my nerves.

Last night we were watching HGTV showcasing new "green" products, and their "green home giveaway" If you really want to live in Hilton Head, South Carolina, then knock yourself out. Don't come complaining to me when your shit is under the sea.

But the icing on the cake during this program was seeing some of the sponsors. GMC Yukon for one, and you'll win one with your beautiful new home. Well? Their green hybrids get maybe 22 mpg! (But not the way I see most people driving them.)

Yeah, green. All the way, baby!

Billions Of Dollars Needed For Cleaner Air

Residents of Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington, and Wyoming, consider yourselves lucky. You have no counties failing to meet the Environmental Protection Agency's new health standard for smog, as provided by the EPA.

Interestingly, Chicago (Cook County) is absent from the list, although suburban Lake County to the north of Chicago is an offender.

Meanwhile, 345 counties fail -- almost half of all counties monitored.

No word yet on how we will fund the estimated $8.8 billion per year for the clean up.

A Cheap Alternative To The Drug Store

Concerned about the high cost of drugs and other prescription meds? At the rate things are going, pretty soon all you'll need to do is just drink your tap water. Aside from possibly relieving a headache, maybe if I drink enough water I'll get a 4-hour boner.

A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.

To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.

But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.

Oh, have I mentioned lately that our world is fucked up?

Blast Fishing in Jamaica

Of all our grand accomplishments during the last 100 years, and there are so many, the development of chemical poisons is not one of them.

While some would argue that long ago we would have lost the ability to feed the billions of people on the planet were is not for crop production improvements brought about by chemicals used as fertilizer or pest control, is it really worth the ultimate cost?

At what point did we forfeit our understanding of nature, cause and effect, and the spiritual interconnectivity of all things? That was a tragic turning point in our existence.

Man’s destruction of the natural world takes many shocking forms. Poachers gun down elephants for the ivory and leave the carcasses to rot. Illegal foresters slash the trees of the rain forests for a quick buck. And in the Blue Mountains and John Crow Mountains here, people go fishing by dumping poison in the Rio Grande.

Any toxin will do. Some favor the pesticide used to keep insects off the coffee plants. Others use the potent solution used to rid cows of ticks. When subjected to the poison, the shrimp — large and small — float right to the top. So do the fish. Catching them is as easy as scooping them up before the river washes them and the poison away.

“You have to put all morals and conscience aside, and then you throw a toxic pesticide in the river,” said Kimberly John of the Nature Conservancy, which is leading an effort to stop what it considers the principal threat to the ecosystem. “It’s a very cold, hard reality to put poison in the river, and whatever jumps out, you catch.”

Economics is driving the practice, experts and river poisoners themselves say.

Ah yes, another ugly side of economics.

“You can get 10 pounds of janga in two hours,” said Carlton Walker, a 42-year-old fisherman. He has been caught twice poisoning the Rio Grande. Wading in the water recently, he showed how he would scoop the poisoned janga like mad and make as much as $50 in no time at all. “It’s quick money,” he said.

Some "fishermen" are also using dynamite in the river which literally blasts fish and shrimp out of the water.

This is sick and depressing. I'm wondering if I should create another blog label: "a fucked world."

What's really sad is that I thought I coined a term for it with my post title. Unfortunately, a Google search revealed an uglier truth.

Dynamite fishing, or blast fishing, is a profound and widespread threat to coral reefs. Though generally illegal, it is practiced in more than thirty countries. Blast fishing kills fish indiscriminately and pulverizes living coral. Repeated blasting creates vast deserts of loose coral rubble largely devoid of marine life.

A Wikipedia writer added:

Blast Fishing is sometimes called "Redneck Fishing" or "Hillbilly Fishing".

Funny. Real funny.

Biofuels Are Anything But Green

Oops! Oh well, it sounded like a good idea.

Two studies released yesterday have concluded that biofuels are not as effective at reducing greenhouse gases as was thought. In fact, not effective at all.

The destruction of natural ecosystems — whether rain forest in the tropics or grasslands in South America — not only releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed, but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon emissions. Cropland also absorbs far less carbon than the rain forests or even scrubland that it replaces.

Together the two studies offer sweeping conclusions: It does not matter if it is rain forest or scrubland that is cleared, the greenhouse gas contribution is significant. More important, they discovered that, taken globally, the production of almost all biofuels resulted, directly or indirectly, intentionally or not, in new lands being cleared, either for food or fuel.

“When you take this into account, most of the biofuel that people are using or planning to use would probably increase greenhouse gasses substantially,” said Timothy Searchinger, lead author of one of the studies and a researcher in environment and economics at Princeton University. “Previously there’s been an accounting error: land use change has been left out of prior analysis.”

What is really pathetic is that we had to wait on two studies to confirm this when it was quite obvious by thinking this through that biofuels are not the answer to our problem. And how in the hell could someone not foresee massive land use changes from attempts to grow enough fuel?

The clearance of grassland releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gas that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land, said Joseph Fargione, lead author of the second paper, and a scientist at the Nature Conservancy. “So for the next 93 years you’re making climate change worse, just at the time when we need to be bringing down carbon emissions.”

Needless to say, not everyone is in agreement. The Renewable Fuels Association and other industry groups are getting a tad pissy, calling the data "simplistic" and not putting the issue "into context." Of course they would.

Keep up the good work. At the very least we'll make no impact on greenhouse gases and destroy what's left of the Amazon rain forests. Admirable.

What is simplistic is our overall outdated approach to solving this problem on a global level and making the assumption that baby steps are going to buy us time.

Personally, I think the planet is already fucked and at the base of most of these attempts at solving the problem lies more greed, corruption, distortion of facts and profiteering, all cleverly cloaked in a package intended to mislead the public into believing our current wasteful standard of living will never require extremely uncomfortable adjustments.

Obama's Nuclear Glitch

The NYT ran a lengthy piece in the Sunday edition titled, "Nuclear Leaks and Response Tested Obama in Senate," and there were some interesting tidbits worth noting which might shed some very recent light on how well Obama might be a strong arm for all this "change" we keep hearing about.

And no, this is not any attempt on my part to start bashing Obama after exposing my earlier positive thoughts about Hillary. I'm not convinced either of them will stand up to corporate interests. It's more of an addendum to my anxieties about expanding nuclear power.

When residents in Illinois voiced outrage two years ago upon learning that the Exelon Corporation had not disclosed radioactive leaks at one of its nuclear plants, the state’s freshman senator, Barack Obama, took up their cause.

Mr. Obama scolded Exelon and federal regulators for inaction and introduced a bill to require all plant owners to notify state and local authorities immediately of even small leaks. He has boasted of it on the campaign trail, telling a crowd in Iowa in December that it was “the only nuclear legislation that I’ve passed.”

“I just did that last year,” he said, to murmurs of approval.

Um, not so fast, you clever liberal agent of progressive change.

While he initially fought to advance his bill, even holding up a presidential nomination to try to force a hearing on it, Mr. Obama eventually rewrote it to reflect changes sought by Senate Republicans, Exelon and nuclear regulators. The new bill removed language mandating prompt reporting and simply offered guidance to regulators, whom it charged with addressing the issue of unreported leaks.

Those revisions propelled the bill through a crucial committee. But, contrary to Mr. Obama’s comments in Iowa, it ultimately died amid parliamentary wrangling in the full Senate.

In other words, he caved in, succumbing to the desires of the largest nuclear plant operator in the United States. And I'm certain this next bit is purely coincidental.

Since 2003, executives and employees of Exelon, which is based in Illinois, have contributed at least $227,000 to Mr. Obama’s campaigns for the United States Senate and for president. Two top Exelon officials, Frank M. Clark, executive vice president, and John W. Rogers Jr., a director, are among his largest fund-raisers.

Another Obama donor, John W. Rowe, chairman of Exelon, is also chairman of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear power industry’s lobbying group, based in Washington. Exelon’s support for Mr. Obama far exceeds its support for any other presidential candidate.

In addition, Mr. Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, has worked as a consultant to Exelon. A spokeswoman for Exelon said Mr. Axelrod’s company had helped an Exelon subsidiary, Commonwealth Edison, with communications strategy periodically since 2002, but had no involvement in the leak controversy or other nuclear issues.

My God, we're talking about a situation in which millions of gallons of contaminated water leaked out, and the nuclear industry is given the upper hand in how to control and/or spin the situation. The levels of tritium in the leaked water, a radioactive byproduct of nuclear power, reportedly did not exceed federal safety standards. Nevertheless, I, for one, don't believe it's too much to ask that any and all leaks be reported.

The rewritten bill also contained the new wording sought by Exelon making it clear that state and local authorities would have no regulatory oversight of nuclear power plants.

[...]

The revised bill was never taken up in the full Senate, where partisan parliamentary maneuvering resulted in a number of bills being shelved before the 2006 session ended.

Still, the legislation has come in handy on the campaign trail. Last May, in response to questions about his ties to Exelon, Mr. Obama wrote a letter to a Nevada newspaper citing the bill as evidence that he stands up to powerful interests.

I'm getting that queasy feeling again -- the same feeling I get during every election cycle when it becomes clear to me just how much change I can expect from a new administration.

Power to the people!


Crossposted at Big Brass Blog

Let the Water Wars Begin

txrad told me several days ago about the drought conditions around Atlanta and that the city's water source could be dry before the end of the year. I guess the NY Times finally considered that news "fit to print."

In the Atlanta metropolitan area, which has more than four million people, worst-case analyses show that the city’s main source of water, Lake Lanier, could be drained dry in 90 to 121 days.

Not surprisingly, some people just don't get it.

“It’s really alarming,” said Janice Terry, co-owner of the Best Foods cafeteria in Siler City. To curtail water use, Best Foods has swapped its dishes for paper plates and foam cups.

Most controversially, it has stopped offering tap water to customers, making them buy 69-cent bottles of water instead. “We’ve had people walk out,” Ms. Terry said. “They get mad when they can’t get a free glass of water.”

Now, where to put all that garbage, the foam cups and whatnot. We are on the road to ruin and most of us don't have a clue.

Green Living

txrad and I have been into the Green Movement for a very long time. We frequently ridicule excessive plastic packaging and mass-produced chunks of plastic crap that are quickly destined for a landfill. The holidays are a particularly lucrative time for this.

We save and reuse just about anything that can be saved. Plastic grocery bags are crammed into one of our kitchen drawers. They are useful for cat litter containers as long as I double bag it. Some of the smaller ones aren't adequate for that, but are perfectly suitable for cat vomit. Any unused bags eventually get stuffed tightly into a larger bag and placed in the trunk of the car where they will eventually be returned to the store for recycling. Ditto with the plastic newspaper bags.

Some things we use very minimally which other people might use almost daily.

I always laugh when I open one of our kitchen drawers and see this.

You're probably thinking, "So? He saves and reuses foil."

Yes, we do as evidenced by the foil in the drawer at the bottom of this picture. But that's not the point of this post, and certainly there's no humor in that.

Some of you may know Ralphs from California. It's a large supermarket chain out there. This is the most recent box of foil we have purchased and it was bought when we lived there. As you can see, there's quite a bit of it left.

Later this month we celebrate 10 years of living in Austin.

So yes, when I open the drawer and see that Ralphs foil, it does make me laugh.

This Is A Joke

I'm gettin' ready to give myself a resurrection.

I just went in the kitchen and turned the oven off. txrad immediately turned it on. I said, " the pizza is done, right?" He said "no. It had a ways to go."

I said, "how do you know? Because the timer is stuck on 18 minutes." And I turned off the oven. He turned it on and said it's paused for the cooking time.

At that point, or maybe a stupid comment or two later, I realized the pizza had not even be put in the oven. The timer was set for when it did. I glanced over and saw a raw pizza pie. Damn.

The end times are coming! The end times are coming!

You heard it hear first.

Little Cabrito, Little Cabrito

Are you made pure?

Or do you contain a hair, or perhaps a drop of that male urine.

Or... a drop of blood.

Kind of makes you wonder about the standards in Mexico, let alone China.

Petrol Price Check

QotD: How much is premium where you are? I don't give a damn about regular since I can't use it. Just a few weeks ago it was about $2.35 here in Austin. Then I noticed it going up several cents a day and suddenly it was $2.59. I tend to notice such things while sitting on the bus staring out the window. I think I may have filled up both cars around that time. Then it kept going... $2.65, $2.75... and now premium is up to about $2.93.

Summer is quite a ways off. Apparently we're going to be seeing $3.00+ long before Memorial Day and frankly, I don't give a shit. My apologies to those of you who must drive places, but I'm glad I'll continue to take the bus to work except on days when I can't for whatever reason. High gas prices will do wonders for the alternative energy brainstorming. Not to mention the fact that I absolutely love to call someone an asshole who is speeding down the road in a Hummer, only to slam on the breaks at the red light which they could clearly have seen for half a mile before they decided to break. Have fun filling that fucker up.

Some people are stupid. Do I need to create a new label for this post? It already overlaps several. Of course if I did add a new label, I'd have to go back and apply it to the post I did this morning. But I'm not lazy. OK, "fuel" it is.

Corn Prices Putting Tortillas Out of Reach for Many Poor Mexicans. Why?

This story isn't at all surprising and there will be far greater repercussions to come.

Facing public outrage over the soaring price of tortillas, President Felipe Calderón abandoned his free-trade principles on Thursday and forced producers to sign an agreement fixing prices for corn products.

Skyrocketing prices for corn on the world market have pushed up the price of the humble tortilla, the mainstay of the Mexican diet, by nearly a third in the past three weeks, to 35 cents a pound in Mexico City and even higher in other parts of the country.

Half of the country’s 107 million people live on $4 a day or less, and many of them survive largely on tortillas and beans. The price increases have riled the public to such an extent that it has created a political storm that threatens to swamp Mr. Calderón’s fresh presidency.

I would certainly shed no tears over a brief Calderón presidency but this issue is about a far greater threat.

There is a continuing debate here about what caused the price of tortillas to shoot up so quickly. Some economists blame the increased demand for corn from ethanol plants in the United States, and it is true corn prices in the States last week reached their highest point in a decade, the United States Agriculture Department said. At the same time, the cost of white corn has risen about 13 percent here over the past year, Mexican government figures show.

But Mexican lawmakers and other officials have suggested that giant tortilla companies and corn flour distributors — among them Grupo Maseca S.A. and Maíz Industrializado S.A., often known as Minsa — have taken advantage of the situation, hoarding supplies to drive prices up even more.

Both situations are probably true. Although more farmers are planting corn this year, the corn is destined for an ever-growing number ethanol plants under construction.

Inspired by soaring demand for corn to feed the growing ethanol industry, farmers across the United States are planting corn this year instead of soybeans, wheat and cotton.

Even the man who farms our land in Arkansas is planning to grow corn this year for the first time ever. He has traditionally only grown cotton, soybeans, and some rice.

Depending on the reduced levels of cotton, soybeans, and wheat farming, it will be quite interesting to see how this all plays out on the global stage as all eyes turn to corn and ethanol production to satisfy our desire and need for alternative fuels and to reduce our dependency on imported fuels.

I've never believed this particular solution was going to be economically viable, particularly when placed in the context of its impact elsewhere. We may soon realize the trade off is not pleasant.

Some farmers are contemplating planting continuous years of corn, but that can lead to pest problems and increased costs for fertilizer and seed, said Bruce Erickson, a Purdue University agricultural economist. And those fields tend to produce less each year. Most farmers rotate their crops to maintain nutrients in the soil and stop insects and weeds.

"Most scientific research shows a 10 percent drop in yield when you plant corn on corn," Erickson said. In Louisiana, the number of acres devoted to corn likely will double and could triple, said David Bollich, a grain marketing specialist with the Louisiana Farm Bureau.

"Everybody wants to get into corn this year, some who have never planted it before," he said.

[...]

Corn prices are so high, though, that it will cost chicken and pork producers more to feed their animals, and that could end up increasing prices at grocery stores.

Construction of ethanol plants is by no means limited to the United States. Fifteen are slated for construction in the Philippines in sugar-producing regions.

Pandora's Box has been opened and the beast is emerging. You have been warned. It will take years for the companies who are investing heavily in ethanol plants to recoup their investment, farmers are desperate for crops which fetch top dollar, and someone is going to pay in the end.

However, if one unintended side effect of all this is a sharp reduction in the livestock industry due to increased costs of feed or grazing land converted to farming more corn, that just might be beneficial if society can adjust to a less meat-based diet.

Last month, the United Nations published a report on livestock and the environment with a stunning conclusion: "The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global." It turns out that raising animals for food is a primary cause of land degradation, air pollution, water shortage, water pollution, loss of biodiversity, and not least of all, global warming.

Hat tip to Litbrit for emailing me that link and this appropriate comment: "Food for thought; fuel for debate, though there really isn't much left to debate when it comes to what humans have done to the planet."

Another hard lesson looms right on the horizon.


Crossposted at B3