If you wonder about oil and the relationship of things ...

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I am encouraging folks to read a great article out in the February 2004 edition of Harpers entitled "The Oil We Eat" by Richard Manning. The article is not available on line at this time, but here are some teaser pieces"

- Humans consume about 40% of everything there is on the earth. "This simple number may explain why the current extinction rate is 1000 timkes that which existed before human domination of the planet."
- "Iowa's fields require the energy of four Nagasaki bombs every year"
- "On average, it takes 5.5 gallons of fossil energy to restore a year's worth of lost fertility to an acre of eroded land - in 1997 we burned through more than four hundred years' worth of ancient fossilized productivity."
-"... if all the world ate the way the United States eats, humanity would exhaust all known global fuel reserves in just over seven years."

This is a truly excellent article. When it is available online, I'll post the link, but don't wait till then to read it.

Posted by rowan at February 3, 2004 08:27 AM | TrackBack | Printable Version | [eMail this article!] |