In addition to automobiles and airplanes, oil has a great deal to do with our food supply and the unsustainability thereof.
Since beginning this blog in February 2011, I have featured the “peak oil” phenomenon in a number of my posts. As with most theories, there are some disagreements among the experts — primarily regarding WHEN peak oil will occur, not if it will. There is no disagreement on the following facts:
The USA reached peak in 1970 (beyond 2010, projections are shown) Notice separate peaks for lower 48, Alaska and deepwater.
- Oil is a finite resource
- Our consumption for the past forty years has been three times as great as our rate of discovery.
- The rate of discovery has been declining for fifty years.
- All wells, fields, and countries eventually reach a peak and then decline (See USA in graph)
- The same will also happen to world production and may be happening right now.
So what’s all this got to do with food and eating a plant-based diet? Everything. That’s because the production of our Western diet is the single most inefficient (wasteful) process taking place on the planet today. Beyond taking charge of your health, how about taking charge of your planet as another good reason to shift to plant-based eating?
On a per calorie basis, it requires twenty times more energy to produce meat and dairy than the same number of plant-based calories. The potential energy savings of shifting to a plant-based diet are enormous.
That’s right — TWENTY times more energy per calorie. Want to become more educated on this crucial topic? Take just 21 minutes and watch the following three videos 4-min, 7-min & 10-minute respectively. In less than a half hour, you will know more than 99% of the population about this very important subject.
You may notice that none of the learned experts in any of these videos mention the possibility of saving enormous amounts of fossil fuels by shifting to a plant-based diet. Why not? Because, as we know, 95% of the humans in the Western world truly believe that we all “need” to eat animal protein. And that includes 95% of the doctors, the scientists, the elected officials and the “peak oil experts.”
Through more blogs like this, movies like Forks over Knives, and examples like President Clinton, that misconception can be changed. And in doing so, we shall change the world. Enjoy!
Note: The next video features an energy expert from the UK; his name is Colin Campbell; not to be confused with Dr. T. Colin Campbell, author of The China Study.
It’s mind-boggling to consider what has happened in just the past one hundred years. On a planet that has sustained life for billions of years, the human race has wreaked big-time havoc in a mere blink of history. Historians 200 years from now will write about the relatively short period from 1920 to 2020 when humans went wild burning a finite resource like it would last forever. They will write about the insane diet-style (and overall lifestyle) that were made possible by that super cheap, albeit temporary, energy resource.
Recently Dr. Sanjay Gupta was asked after his “Last Heart Attack” special if he thought that the heart disease-reversing plant-based diet was a bit too “extreme” to be widely accepted. He replied that 200 years from now that they will talk about what we are eating now as the “most extreme diet-style in the history of the world.”
J. Morris Hicks, author and activist. Working daily to promote health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.
The Bottom Line. If you watched the videos, you can easily see how the arrival of peak oil could have a devastating impact on the world economy. Our only chance to prevent economic collapse, riots, famine and wars is to re-engineer our lifestyles to require far less energy — NOW.
We also need to have time to develop many renewable sources of energy. Everyone shifting to a plant-based diet-style is the best possible way to give us the time we need for both. A few more of my earlier blogs on this topic:
Finite Fossil Fuels…3 ways to make them last longer
Worried about gas prices? You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet
The Price of Oil…and the food we eat
If you like what you see here, you may wish to join our periodic mailing list. Also, for help in your own quest to take charge of your health, you might find some useful information at our 4-Leaf page. From the seaside village of Stonington, Connecticut – Be well and have a great day.
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—J. Morris Hicks…blogging daily at HealthyEatingHealthyWorld.com
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J. Morris Hicks, engineer. writer. big picture guy. 