Meat.
Here's the deal about telling people to stop eating meat.
It is an economic fact that we do not "raise grain to feed to meat."
Cattle do not prosper on a diet of grain. It's not even good for them.
We raise cattle to consume grain, to create a market for grain. No reverse.
I'm not saying, eat meat. I'm saying, when we didn't eat enough meat, they had to start feeding corn to cars.
After feeding 10% processed corn to cars, we found that we still were not providing sufficient market for corn.
So we raised it to 15%.
Motorcyclists screamed NOOOOOO!!!
3. It is a production fact that at the time a bushel of corn moves from the combine to the grain truck at the edge of the field, that corn contains more fossil fuel BTUs of energy than are present as corn BTUs.
Then we haul it, heat it, distill it - add more fossil energy -
4. Then truck it to refineries, where it is added to gasoline - or, in the case of soybeans, to diesel fuel - and burned.
Running the fossil fuel through corn before burning it in cars and light trucks is a net loss of energy.
Should have left the cornfield to grow Johnsongrass.
5. Taken the gasoline that produced the corn, burned *that* in the cars and trucks, and taken a team of horses and a mower, mowed down the carbon-containing Johnsongrass, and left it to rot, sequestering carbon.
Would have required less total energy and emissions.
It ain't the 🐂
Mow the Johnsongrass like this. Don't waste a bunch of fossil energy for the primary purpose of turning a livable climate into cash for a few rich people.
But, you know... Lies.
PS. Raise cattle on grass. If that means meat costs more, and w can't produce as much, perfect. Then people will eat less of it. Win-win.
Quit screaming at the suckers at the bottom. They're not running the system.
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Fictional Oval Office speech:
"My fellow Americans:
"My administration, in meetings with the leaders of France, Germany, Canada, and Mexico, has concluded that it is time to tell you, our citizens, the unvarnished truth about climate.
2. "There is not, today, any possibility that building a global renewable energy infrastructure to attain a hypothetical net zero emissions level in the foreseeable or likely future. The up-front production emissions can never be removed in the predicted emissions-free out years
3. "As you are aware, our national high speed transportation infrastructure is collapsing and can no longer safely carry the load we are putting on it.
"As you may not have been informed, building concrete based transportation infrastructure is one of the most emissions centric
Regular readers know what I write. I've been at this three years. Before that I was a conventional climate worrier and thought building renewables would fix it, but I observed the trends. It's not working. So I got weird. I followed the links between energy and needs, and wants,
2. and I said, OK, that can't be made to work.
My only evidence is, it's not working. We've been at it a while. According to all the white papers I keep getting linked to, we should be seeing reductions by now.
We're not.
It's not working.
And ... Slowing down will work.
3. Slowing down in an intelligent, organized fashion, even regionally, with the objective being a walking pace culture, would certainly reduce emissions, starting immediately.
I mean, it's there. Show the competing hypothesis.
But: it's off limits.
Reasonable People™ do not.
I just spent two hours out in the 90° sun detaching and reattaching my hay mower to the Little John, a 3 cylinder Japanese compact John Deere tractor. 3 point hitch. 5 foot mower.
I'm not done, but I had pushed myself so close to heat injury that I had to come in.
2. I've been in about ten minutes, shirt off, A/C on, standing under a ceiling fan on medium.
I'm still producing new sweat. Haven't shed my excess heat energy yet. Getting closer.
"Easy" 3 point hitch tractor technology.
3. Here's the first half of hitching a team to a wheeled load. This is a cart, but a mower hitches exactly the same.
It's easy to fall into thinking what you're against. Easy for me. Judging by what I hear, easy for a lot of people.
Even what we're for is often being against some specific destruction. Whales. Sharks. Pipelines. Mines. Desecration.
It's easier to explain, too.
2. "See, they shouldn't bulldoze this mountain pass and extract lithium from it because the sage grouse needs it."
That is correct.
But if not this mountain pass, which one?
If not this forest, this stream, this prairie, which one?
3. The logic of our system of life and living, to its very foundation, says we have to bulldoze this mountain pass, because we have to have electric cars to fight climate change, and we need the lithium.
We need the wood.
We need the oil. It's way the hell up there and we need it
Spending high energy tonight. Loading up the lap steel (homemade) and the amplifier (not) and driving at somewhere close to a mile a minute at peak times, for about an hour and a half to three quarters, and play this guitar with two friends, and drink two beers, and do it back.
I have several high energy activities that would be utterly impossible without high energy high speed transportation and other machines.
Utterly dependent on fossil fuels and a huge built environment of concrete and steel.
I sometimes take long hot showers.
3. We've got this personal responsibility for climate activities backwards. Don't take long hot showers.
There's easily half a million long hot showers in one electric car. We've got to develop different systems, not live like paupers in this one while Jeff Bezos fucks the sky.
I don't believe there is one agreed-upon definition of "an economy", but the one I like to base my reasoning on is "The means by which a society obtains and distributes the resources necessary for living to its members."
2. I have read that "economy" comes from the Greek for "housekeeping." Makes sense. Each household has to run itself, get food, water, shelter, clothing. These are the absolutes, our needs as biological creatures.
Our current economy is, by that definition, pretty poor.
3. Some people have enough resources to blast themselves, encased in a giant phallus, to the edge of the gravity well.
Some don't.
All in one country.
Piss poor economy, I'd say.