http://organictobe.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/tractor.jpg

Green Hypocrisy

From Gene Logsdon:

There’s a lot of loose talk going around these days about “green” alternatives to save the world. Most of that green is really about the color of money, not the environment. The latest green sensation involves a farm tractor that recently broke the record for fast cultivation (fast food requires fast cultivation). According to the news, a 570 hp. AGCO tractor, pulling a 60 foot disk, ripped up 1,591 acres of dirt in 24 hours, or, and I quote, “a football field every two minutes.” And, say the AGCO people, the tractor used only about a gallon of fuel per acre in the process. That makes it a “green” tractor, even though it is not a John Deere. My ancient WD Allis Chalmers (orange) uses about a gallon of fuel per acre too, but pulling a much smaller disk and at a slower speed, it would take me all summer to disk up 1,591 acres.

So why am I not impressed? As is the case for most green sensations, the whole story is not being told. Take for example the ethanol fiasco, the noble idea that the world can be saved from oil shortages by producing ethanol fuel from corn. That notion has been thoroughly debunked but it still lives its own green life as farmers and ethanol plant owners seek to take advantage of the huge subsidies involved. If all the tillable acres in the world were planted to corn to make ethanol, the amount of fuel produced would equal about 17% of what we burn, say the experts, and then we’d starve to death and wouldn’t need any fuel.

So too, a tractor that burns only a gallon of fuel per acre, ethanol or regular, while steaming along tearing up the earth at the rate of a football field every two minutes, isn’t telling the whole story. How much fuel was used mining and smelting and refining the steel used in that 570 hp behemoth? How much fuel used turning the steel into machined parts? How much fuel used transporting workers to and from the mines and the factories? How much fuel needed to heat the factories? To transport the tractor to its ultimate buyer? To transport the executives and advertisers on their worldwide rounds to publicize a heap of iron big enough to rip up a football field in two minutes? And don’t forget to add in the airplane fuel used to fly them to meetings where they mostly play golf. How many gallons of fuel are used to drive the tractor to and from the fields between episodes of ripping up 1,591 acres in 24 hours? How many more gallons have to be burned by other tractors and trucks in planting all that land ripped up by the disk, spraying the crops grown thereon, harvesting the grain, hauling it to market or to storage, not to mention the huge amount of fuel needed to dry the grain after it is in storage to keep it from rotting. Then of course the grain has to be shipped far and wide across the world to its final destination, usually the rumen of an animal penned up in a fattening factory. And remember, even at a gallon per acre, there’s a lot of gas involved ripping up many hundreds of thousands of acres.

Now compare that to another kind of farming, where 1,591 acres would be planted permanently to grass and clover and grazed by 1,000 head of cows or 3000 head of sheep. No annual cultivation would be needed at all. No erosion. No soil compaction. Not even half the machinery cost would be involved, and if the meat, wool, and dairy products were sold locally, only half the transportation costs.

There would be an earth-shattering record in fuel savings, a record that would not mean shattering the earth.
~~

Gene and Carol Logsdon have a small-scale experimental farm in Wyandot County, Ohio.

http://organictobe.org/index.php/2007/1 ... hypocrisy/ (http://organictobe.org/index.php/2007/10/19/green-hypocrisy/)

Such an excellent main point, so poorly made.


Most of that green is really about the color of money, not the environment.

Hear, hear.


The latest green sensation involves a farm tractor that recently broke the record for fast cultivation (fast food requires fast cultivation). According to the news, a 570 hp. AGCO tractor, pulling a 60 foot disk, ripped up 1,591 acres of dirt in 24 hours, or, and I quote, “a football field every two minutes.” And, say the AGCO people, the tractor used only about a gallon of fuel per acre in the process. That makes it a “green” tractor, even though it is not a John Deere. My ancient WD Allis Chalmers (orange) uses about a gallon of fuel per acre too, but pulling a much smaller disk and at a slower speed, it would take me all summer to disk up 1,591 acres.

Nonsense.

While "tearing up a football field every two minutes" sounds somehow bad, that is a silly thing to say. Speed is not related to how many acres get plowed.

"Fast food requires fast cultivation" is a cute slogan, but is misleading. If there is a connection between the two, the author didn't make that connection. This is an example of how agrouclture ios smeared by association woth unrelated subjects. In this case, the farmer's tractor with McDonalds.


So why am I not impressed? As is the case for most green sensations, the whole story is not being told. Take for example the ethanol fiasco, the noble idea that the world can be saved from oil shortages by producing ethanol fuel from corn. That notion has been thoroughly debunked but it still lives its own green life as farmers and ethanol plant owners seek to take advantage of the huge subsidies involved. If all the tillable acres in the world were planted to corn to make ethanol, the amount of fuel produced would equal about 17% of what we burn, say the experts, and then we’d starve to death and wouldn’t need any fuel.

Huh? The rest of the story about the tractor is the ethanol hustle? How does ethanol make one not impressed by the tractor?

The critique of ethanol craze is spot on.


So too, a tractor that burns only a gallon of fuel per acre, ethanol or regular, while steaming along tearing up the earth at the rate of a football field every two minutes, isn’t telling the whole story. How much fuel was used mining and smelting and refining the steel used in that 570 hp behemoth? How much fuel used turning the steel into machined parts? How much fuel used transporting workers to and from the mines and the factories? How much fuel needed to heat the factories? To transport the tractor to its ultimate buyer? To transport the executives and advertisers on their worldwide rounds to publicize a heap of iron big enough to rip up a football field in two minutes? And don’t forget to add in the airplane fuel used to fly them to meetings where they mostly play golf. How many gallons of fuel are used to drive the tractor to and from the fields between episodes of ripping up 1,591 acres in 24 hours? How many more gallons have to be burned by other tractors and trucks in planting all that land ripped up by the disk, spraying the crops grown thereon, harvesting the grain, hauling it to market or to storage, not to mention the huge amount of fuel needed to dry the grain after it is in storage to keep it from rotting. Then of course the grain has to be shipped far and wide across the world to its final destination, usually the rumen of an animal penned up in a fattening factory. And remember, even at a gallon per acre, there’s a lot of gas involved ripping up many hundreds of thousands of acres.

This is the typical activist rubbish. There are hidden costs in the use of ANY tractor for ANY kind of farming. We have one tractor in this country to feed every 1200 people driving 1200 autrombilers talking on 1200 cell phones. Give the fucking farmer a break already.

The costs of the executives has to do with corporate capitalism, not farming, and farming should not be smeared by association with that.

No matter how many acres a tractor plows in a minute, and no matter what kind of tractor, that doesnlt change the4 net inputs required for said acreage.

There is either a lot of gas required to till or plow - why the use of the phrase "rip up" except to appeal to people's emotions? - or a lot of labor. The farmer doesn't care which. People wanted to move to the suburbs and didn't want to farm. Those people need to be fed. The farmer does what he has to do - not to support some unsustaoinable farming method, but to support the unsustainable suburban lifelstyle. The solution is to dismantle suburbia, not attack farming.


Now compare that to another kind of farming, where 1,591 acres would be planted permanently to grass and clover and grazed by 1,000 head of cows or 3000 head of sheep. No annual cultivation would be needed at all. No erosion. No soil compaction. Not even half the machinery cost would be involved, and if the meat, wool, and dairy products were sold locally, only half the transportation costs.

Rubbish. If what he is saying here is true, then it would be more profitable to use his ideal method. No work, no feed, no fuel, no soil management. Gee and here we thought farming was a skill that was deserving of our respect, and that farmers faced a diffcult life and deserved our support and admiration. Nope. Food grows all by itself, and you can just sell it locally and make a living. Nothing to it. In a capitalist system, that would soon be the only kind of farming there was if it were the most profitable. Of course to sell it locally, you would have to free range these critters near the population centers - across the highway from the mall, I suppose. Who can afford that land? What suburban zoning laws would permit animal husbandry?

But we are not permitted in our activism to apply class analysis, we may not challenge capitalism, and we must take as a given the the survival of suburban life. Therefore, farming and farmers must be attacked and blamed for the problems.


Gene and Carol Logsdon have a small-scale experimental farm in Wyandot County, Ohio.

They are suburban refugees, with income from corporate sources outside of agriculture, who are playing at being farmers and lecturing the rest of us about how we should live and work.

We have an awful lot of useless mouths to feed, and THAT is why we need tractors. One farmer with a tractor can feed 1200 people. One farmer without a tractor can feed 12. Just as soon as those other 1188 people are ready to give up whatever it is they do in the suburbs and move back to the farm, where there is a desperate labor shortage at all levels including owners, we can get rid of tractors.

Why is the farmer attacked? He is just trying to feed the stock brokers, the bureaucrats, the real estate agents, the developers, the speculators, the agents, the managers, the financiers, the new age gurus, the planners, the hustlers, the salesman, the con artists - why aren't those people, whose lives and activities are the root cause of the problems, attacked? Just as the nurse must treat the patient regardless of how they were hurt or became injured, the farmer must feed the people no matter what sort of ridiculous, wasteful, destructive, and useless lives they insist on pursuing. So long as people insist on pursuing the American suburban dream, farmers are under a lot of pressure to keep them all fed.

Thoughts On Economic "Inevitability"

by Gene Logsdon


Sometimes I believe that all the lessons of life can be learned at home. Just this morning I heard a nationally renowned agricultural economist on the radio make a prediction that I have a hunch will embarrass him greatly if he lives long enough. (Perhaps all our attempts at predicting the future would embarrass us if we lived long enough.) He said that an agriculture of huge grain farms and huge animal factories was "inevitable." He did not state that observation as his opinion, but as a fact that sentimental old fools like me had better get used to. He also seemed to think that inevitable carried with it the notion of forever.

I wonder if he would have made that prediction had he known deeply the history of any one place.

I need look no farther than right here in the fields of home to learn a lesson in not making grand prophecies like that. As long as I can remember -- 60 years -- the land around me, including my own, has been devoted to grain and livestock farming. But in the mid 1800s, sheep were the principle agricultural commodity. My great-grandfather went to work for one of those sheep ranches, which were then growing in acreage dramatically especially on the native prairie parts of our county, where there were fewer trees to whack off. Had there been agricultural economists in those days, I can imagine them saying with all the pomposity due their royal offices, that huge sheep ranches were "inevitable."

But economic conditions are more fickle than an April whirlwind. Within a generation, money was finding different pathways to follow. The sheep ranches became quickly "obsolete," (in America obsolete means unprofitable) and farmers like my great-grandfather bought the land and converted it to smaller, more diversified, and much more "efficient" grain and livestock farms. So profitable was this kind of farming that great-grandfather before 1900 had consolidated some 2,000 acres into his operation. Get big or get out, of course.

Once again, I can hear the economists of that era stating with absolute arrogance that more and larger grain and livestock farms were "inevitable." But great-grandfather's sons inherited that land and parcelled it out to their numerous offspring into 160-acre family farms, because that was the most "efficient" way to apply manpower for profitability. At that time, all sorts of economists sucking up to the public trough were saying that the continuation of small family farms was not only inevitable but "the great victory of the American system." Now that these little farms have been displaced by big cash grain farms and huge animal factories, the same economists are braying that the situation is "inevitable."

Obviously, the lesson of history is otherwise. Changing economic conditions make it just as possible that agriculture could revert to small, intensive garden farming coupled with small intensively grazed animal farms, or to something hardly dreamed about now, like a preponderance of algae and fish aquacultural farms.

Prophets of "inevitability" based on progression from small to large or from frontier to city might ponder the farm that borders mine on the east side. Without deep, abiding, neighborhood memory, no one today would suspect that those cornfields once grew an airport! The land went from forest to sheep ranch to grain cultivation to airfield and then against all worldly wisdom back to livestock and then to cash grain. Perhaps the next stop on the stumbling steps of history is as a golf course, which happened to some of the old sheep pastures several miles away at Harpster. This airport, next to our farm, was known as "Rall Field" after my mother's family who owned and farmed the land. Rall Field was something of a commercial enterprise in 1930, when, in our society's biased way of thinking, farm "hicks" should hardly have known what an airplane looked like, let alone operated an airfield.

The airport is remembered not for reasons of historical progression, but because of a humorous story that went with it. On Sundays, planes would fly in from Bucyrus and Marion and other towns in the area and take people for rides. Some of the planes, in fact all of the planes, were fragile, homemade affairs guaranteed to supply the "hicks" with plenty of weekend excitement.

The story goes that the owner-builder of one such plane, possibly not trusting the crate himself, hired a pilot to fly it from Bucyrus, where he kept it, to Rall Field for an afternoon of rides. Arriving at the field before his plane got there, the budding airline executive noticed that there was a dead furrow across the upper end of the landing strip. Such a little bit of a ditch would not be visible from the air, and it might cause enough of a bump to damage the plane to a pilot unfamiliar with Rall Field.

So the earliest and only air controller our township has ever known, placed himself over the worrisome old mark of the plow and as the plane hove into sight, began waving his hands and pointing down at the ground to make sure the pilot would pass well over the dead furrow before touching down. But the pilot interpreted the waving hands in just the opposite way. It seemed strange to him that his boss wanted him to set the plane down so near the end of the runway, but it was obvious, from the increasing ferocity with which he waved, that such was the case. Down he came, as close to his screaming, purple-faced signaller as possible without hitting him. When the plane hit the furrow, it nosed over and crumpled up like a paper accordion, but the rate of speed was so slow that the pilot walked away unhurt.

Rall Field did not last long. Albert Rall, applying his pencil stub to his daybook he kept handily in his bib overalls, calculated that corn and cows were a good deal more profitable than airplane rides, at least for the time being.

Another even more graphic example of how "progress" is not always from forest primeval to farm to strip mall comes from Mississippi. The first officially recorded 300-bushel corn yield was grown in that state, much to the chagrin of the Corn Belt. That was back in 1952 and how well I remember the excitement and the chagrin. How the farm magazine rhetoric flowed at the announcement of that record-smashing yield. Soon of course, 300-bushel corn would be common, said all the asshole economists, and if Mississippi could do it, the Corn Belt with the help of increased fertilizers and chemicals and hybrid vigor, yawn yawn, would soon ring up a 400-bushel yield. The word "inevitable" was flung around very loosely on that occasion too.

Today, forty some years later, the field that grew the first 300-bushel corn is a forest again! Furthermore yields of 300 bushels per acre have been achieved only in three or four more isolated instances. Ironically, it would appear now that if 300-bushel yields are to become commmonplace, as predicted, it will happen on biointensively-managed raised-bed garden plots, not large scale agribusiness farming. There are contrary gardeners doing it now.

http://www.ibiblio.org/farming-connecti ... ogsdon.htm (http://www.ibiblio.org/farming-connection/ruralwri/logsdon.htm)

Changing economic conditions make it just as possible that agriculture could revert to small, intensive garden farming coupled with small intensively grazed animal farms, or to something hardly dreamed about now, like a preponderance of algae and fish aquacultural farms.

I have to completely reject this view, chlamor.

"Free market" forces are not the answer.

Large scale farms ARE inevitable - given the current political and economic conditions.

It is not what the farmers are doing that needs to change; it is what the eaters are doing.

We have a political problem, not an agricultural problem. It is about class and it is about power, it is not about farming methods.

I see that they found a farmer they can tack onto their image, as a token, to give their organization some credibility.

Let's look at their "Why organic for the 21st Century" credo.


1. Reduce The Toxic Load: Keep Chemicals Out of the Air, Water, Soil and our Bodies
Buying organic food promotes a less toxic environment for all living things. With only 0.5 percent of crop and pasture land in organic, according to USDA that leaves 99.5 percent of farm acres in the U.S. at risk of exposure to noxious agricultural chemicals. Our bodies are the environment, so supporting organic agriculture doesn’t just benefit your family, it helps all families live less toxically.

The assumption that organic reduces toxic load is completely unfounded. Nice theory, but it is not the reality. The biggest problem growers have faced in Michigan when attempting organic has been the increased toxic load and deteriorating soil conditions.


2. Reduce if Not Eliminate Off Farm Pollution
Industrial agriculture doesn’t singularly pollute farmland and farm workers; it also wreaks havoc on the environment downstream. Pesticide drift affects non-farm communities with odorless and invisible poisons. Synthetic fertilizer drifting downstream is the main culprit for dead zones in delicate ocean environments, such as the Gulf of Mexico, where its dead zone is now larger than 22,000 square kilometers, an area larger than New Jersey, according to Science magazine, August, 2002.

Some types of farming, yes. But organic versus non-organic is a false dichotomy here.


3. Protect Future Generations
Before a mother first nurses her newborn, the toxic risk from pesticides has already begun. Studies show that infants are exposed to hundreds of harmful chemicals in utero. In fact, our nation is now reaping the results of four generations of exposure to agricultural and industrial chemicals, whose safety was deemed on adult tolerance levels, not on children’s. According to the National Academy of Science, “neurologic and behavioral effects may result from low-level exposure to pesticides.” Numerous studies show that pesticides can adversely affect the nervous system, increase the risk of cancer, and decrease fertility.

Toxicity is bad. Farming is the last place to look to solve the problem, however.


4. Build Healthy Soil
Mono-cropping and chemical fertilizer dependency has taken a toll with a loss of top soil estimated at a cost of $40 billion per year in the U.S., according to David Pimental of Cornell University. Add to this an equally disturbing loss of micro nutrients and minerals in fruits and vegetables. Feeding the soil with organic matter instead of ammonia and other synthetic fertilizers has proven to increase nutrients in produce, with higher levels of vitamins and minerals found in organic food, according to the 2005 study, “Elevating Antioxidant levels in food through organic farming and food processing,” Organic Center State of Science Review (1.05)

Misleading and overstated. There is no body of evidence demonstrating that "organic" means increased nutrition in food. One can find the odd study here or there to demonstrate just about anything. Good soil management is good soil management, organic has nothing to do with it.


5. Taste Better and Truer Flavor
Scientists now know what we eaters have known all along: organic food often tastes better. It makes sense that strawberries taste yummier when raised in harmony with nature, but researchers at Washington State University just proved this as fact in lab taste trials where the organic berries were consistently judged as sweeter. Plus, new research verifies that some organic produce is often lower in nitrates and higher in antioxidants than conventional food. Let the organic feasting begin!

Yes, the same one flawed and limited study, repeated again and again and again because it came up with the desired result. There is no credible evidence supporting this absurd and sweeping claim. It is easy to prove false. I can take you out to taste compare the same berry variety in a hundred different locations, and you will find a great deal of variation in flavor and sweetness. It has nothing to do with "organic" or "non-organic." Besides, berries are a very poor example. A good example of a low input high output crop, in terms of nutritional density.


6. Assist Family Farmers of all Sizes
According to Organic Farming Research Foundation, as of 2006 there are approximately 10,000 certified organic producers in the U.S. compared to 2500 to 3,000 tracked in 1994. Measured against the two million farms estimated in the U.S. today, organic is still tiny. Family farms that are certified organic farms have a double economic benefit: they are profitable and they farm in harmony with their surrounding environment. Whether the farm is a 4-acre orchard or a 4,000-acre wheat farm, organic is a beneficial practice that is genuinely family-friendly.

All myth and supposition. Organic does not help save the family farm. They merely conflate two desirable goals - safety and small farms - and ask us to think that organic somehow is associated with or responsible for both.


7. Avoid Hasty and Poor Science in Your Food
Cloned food. GMOs and rBGH. Oh my! Interesting how swiftly these food technologies were rushed to market, when organic fought for 13 years to become federal law. Eleven years ago, genetically modified food was not part of our food supply; today an astounding 30 percent of our cropland is planted in GMOs. Organic is the only de facto seal of reassurance against these and other modern, lab-produced additions to our food supply, and the only food term with built in inspections and federal regulatory teeth.

Organic is not a guarantee against new technologies. In theory for those living in la la land, maybe. But in the real world, the organic label has led to less oversight and more uncertainty about food quality. It has opened up a vast area for corporations to gouge and mislead the public. Saying "well yeah yeah but that isn't the REAL organic" is nonsense. There IS no real organic except in people's imaginations - that is the problem. As far as the consumer is concerned, if it says "organic" on the package it is organic. That label now means nothing let alone being a guarantee of all of the wonderful things promised by the label. It oiften means no more than that a Mexican or Chinese official has been bribed by a US corporate agri-business representative to put an "organic" stamp on some paperwork and steer food around the normal inspection procedures.


8. Eating with a Sense of Place
Whether it is local fruit, imported coffee or artisan cheese, organic can demonstrate a reverence for the land and its people. No matter the zip code, organic has proven to use less energy (on average, about 30 percent less), is beneficial to soil, water and local habitat, and is safer for the people who harvest our food. Eat more seasonably by supporting your local farmers market while also supporting a global organic economy year round. It will make your taste buds happy.

Great goal, nothing to do with organic.


9. Promote Biodiversity
Visit an organic farm and you’ll notice something: a buzz of animal, bird and insect activity. These organic oases are thriving, diverse habitats. Native plants, birds and hawks return usually after the first season of organic practices; beneficial insects allow for a greater balance, and indigenous animals find these farms a safe haven. As best said by Aldo Leopold, “A good farm must be one where the native flora and fauna have lost acreage without losing their existence.” An organic farm is the equivalent of reforestation. Industrial farms are the equivalent of clear cutting of native habitat with a focus on high farm yields.

Out and out lie. The organic movement wants to take anything good happening in ag - or appealing to ignorant people - and claim those things as "organic" and then take everything bad that is happening and declare that as "non-organic." This is an ongoing campaign of outright lying and deceiving the public that is enormously destructive to farming and to the public in general.

This must be fought. It is elitist, politically reactionary, and very dangerous to our future.


10. Celebrate the Culture of Agriculture
Food is a ‘language’ spoken in every culture. Making this language organic allows for an important cultural revolution whereby diversity and biodiversity are embraced and chemical toxins and environmental harm are radically reduced, if not eliminated. The simple act of saving one heirloom seed from extinction, for example, is an act of biological and cultural conservation. Organic is not necessarily the most efficient farming system in the short run. It is slower, harder, more complex and more labor-intensive. But for the sake of culture everywhere, from permaculture to human culture, organic should be celebrated at every table.

Blah, blah, blah. Corporate-speak marketing rhetoric.

Talking about “celebrating our food choices” while people are starving in the world is something I find obscene, especially when you can see the knife directed at the heart of farmers hidden behind the feel-good rhetoric.

So too, a tractor that burns only a gallon of fuel per acre, ethanol or regular, while steaming along tearing up the earth at the rate of a football field every two minutes, isn’t telling the whole story. How much fuel was used mining and smelting and refining the steel used in that 570 hp behemoth? How much fuel used turning the steel into machined parts? How much fuel used transporting workers to and from the mines and the factories? How much fuel needed to heat the factories? To transport the tractor to its ultimate buyer? To transport the executives and advertisers on their worldwide rounds to publicize a heap of iron big enough to rip up a football field in two minutes? And don’t forget to add in the airplane fuel used to fly them to meetings where they mostly play golf. How many gallons of fuel are used to drive the tractor to and from the fields between episodes of ripping up 1,591 acres in 24 hours? How many more gallons have to be burned by other tractors and trucks in planting all that land ripped up by the disk, spraying the crops grown thereon, harvesting the grain, hauling it to market or to storage, not to mention the huge amount of fuel needed to dry the grain after it is in storage to keep it from rotting.

I know what you are saying Mike and mostly agree. Much of what you are saying hinges on what is defined as "organic" and as you know I too find it all to have become elitist, a parody of itself and well uh not organic. And I'm not just speaking of the USDA definition or standards.

The heart of the matter for me was the above paragraph which could also be applied to hybrid autos and sooo much else. The point wasn't just about the green money it was also about the hidden energy costs- the big fraud of green-ism as "sustainable" a lifestyle. The hypocrisy is never-ending.

Just a coupla' asides. The bit about organic farming in Michigan increasing toxicity and soil erosion in Michigan may be true but I would want details about each place. This is not the case with the farms I have contact with here in NY. Quite the opposite. These are mixed vegetable, dairy, poultry and small-scale fruit growers.

As for the corporate funding of Logsdon and Co. I'd be interested in that info. What more do you know about Gene Logsdon?

There is much else I could say here but we've gone 'round and round on this so I'll give it a rest for now.

Post Script:

Walked into the bathroom at the back of our local food Co-Op today. There was a 8X11 sheet taped to the wall that said:

ACHTUNG!

Attention, please stop writing on the walls as management has provided you with a nice board to write your thoughts.....

and the rest of the crap.

I'm not much for writing on walls but in this case I had to, so I got a pen out of my backpack and wrote on the wall next to the paper:

Management at a Co-Op?
What's up with that?
Authoritarians suck.

Good points. Thanks. I agree with what you say here.

Small scale vegetables and berries, and to some extent tree fruit are easily enough accomplished with very little in pest control. And of course, organic is an excellent model for livestock. But lumping the two together, and then adding in cotton farming and row crops and trying to apply a one size fits all magic bullet and call it organic - that serves no one but corporate agri-business and an upscale few. A lucky few will get their organic veggies and free range chicken. The rest of the population will be stuck with food grown in China. There are just too many variables, and organic is too poorly defined as a term and is used to cover too broad of a range to be of much use.

Assessing total costs is very important. It is a matter of perspective and proportion. One tractor to feed 1200 people - with all of them living in suburbia and driving cars - where is the logical point to attack the problem? Taking away the farmer's tractor? All that will solve is to drive food production overseas.

I keep harping on this because I am convinced that much of the ag activism from liberals is aimed at preserving suburbia, at the expense of damaging farming. The false idea is that we can just go along with our lives as we have been, merely making a few "improvements" to our lifestyle such as making "better choices" in food purchases. "I care about my family. That's why I insist on organic!" Very dangerous illusion there. Continually smearing farmers is a way to distract people away from looking at the fundamental problems with suburbia. If the activists attacked suburbia, they would be offending the people who are the source of their funding.

It used to gall me no end when upscale suburban people, up for the weekend from 300 miles away, who had bought newly developed property to have a sprawling and manicured getaway vacation home in farm country, would pull up in their big ass honking SUV with their cell phones in hand and ask in a snotty voice if we were organic. Compared to fucking what? And of course every single environment they live and work in down in suburbia is drenched in pesticides, all unregulated. Complaining about farm equipment in the road, and the smell of manure, and then blocking up the farm roads riding their expensive imported Italian bikes wearing their skin tight lime green bodysuits doesn't make them any friends in farming country, either.

Many activists seem to be completely unaware as to how socialized agriculture is. Appealing to consumers to make different choices and running scare campaigns to raise donations both operate against the socialization of agriculture and drive it back into the "free market" model. Not good.

We would do far better to re-model suburbia based on the principles of agriculture than to force farming to adapt to suburbia anymore than it already has.

I know that I am a pain in the ass on this subject, but I really do want us to continue the discussion. For example, I am intensely interested to hear the farms in your location described in more detail, if you are willing to do that. I did an extensive tour of organic and CSA farms on the western slope in Colorado a couple of months ago. Many good people, and many good discussions.

Here is some of what I saw:

Flowers, rutabagas, greens, squash, berries, herbs and the like are very easily grown without any sort of pest control, especially in a very dry climate using irrigation. That is what most of the organic growers gravitate toward, because being organic is more important to them than feeding people. I don't mean that so much as a criticism, but just an observation. Most of that produce goes to the super wealthy few in places like Aspen.

I am really inspired by the organic live stock people and their operations. They tend to be farmers first, and activists second. Small scale beef and poultry production works extremely well, quality of the food and impact on the environment are dramatically improved compared to CAFOs and I think this could replace the CAFO nightmare easily. Prices are marginally higher, but not prohibitively and they cannot keep up with demand.

Several of the most progressive farmers are voluntarily abandoning use of the organic label, telling people that it is no longer a useful or reliable measure of anything. "We have been farming for 35 years. Our loyal customers trust us to farm in the safest most sustainable way and support us for that reason. We no longer will call ourselves organic, because we believe that gives people a false and misleading view of agriculture." They encourage people to come out and visit, to learn about their methods, and to gain an appreciation for the complexities involved. That is a great approach IMHO.

The supermarkets, especially the upscale ones, are flooded with imports labeled "organic" which are sold under folksy sounding brand names that are actually divisions of one of the eight largest agri-business corporations. I don't trust that nonsense in the least, and the damage being done is that it is being sold as MORE trustworthy when it is actually more deceptive. Deceiving and dumbing down the buying public cannot be a good thing.

There is virtually no meaningful on farm inspection or regulation of organic standards, and that which exists is easy to circumvent. Widespread cheating (if you can call anything in the organic movement widespread, since it is such a miniscule and insignificant portion of farming) goes on. This is one reason that honest farmers are abandoning the organic label and model. I am of the opinion, and operate under the assumption that all imported produce labeled organic is falsely labeled. There is too much demand, the model is too unproductive, and the possibility of windfall profits is too tempting for it to be otherwise.

There is no way to test the actual produce itself, since organic and non-organic is not measurably different. This is a weakness of the organic movement. With water, we not only inspect the handling and treatment facilities, but we test the water itself - of course. It is the safety of the water we are concerned with. But there is nothing to test with organic - nothing different, nothing to measure.

Why not divide the problem up, back into its component parts? What applies to row crops does not apply to specialty crops, and what applies to either does not apply to animal husbandry. Strengthen and enforce soil and water management practices at one end, and food safety - measured by testing the actual food rather than testing and trying to measure the spiritual purity of the farmer - at the other end.

But mainly we need to dismantle suburbia. Transfer the subsidies that now support suburbia into farm support programs. That would lead to millions wanting to move out of stock broking or whatever and back to the land.

I will see if I can't get ahold of Gene Logsdon next week and chat with him. Starting next year I will be doing some different work, with a non-profit, and not so much in the advocacy and sales and marketing end. I am trying to be a little more open-minded and not as strident and to build bridges to former adversaries (supreme sacrifice, you have no idea the challenge this is lol). I will be editing a publication and producing some documentaries. It was easier to take one side and blast away. Looking for constructive alternatives, and opening up a broader discussion is a much bigger challenge. Much learning and work ahead I think.

The main goals as I see them:

1. Socialized food production with a massive effort along the lines of the CCC to kick that off. Food is a necessity, and socializing food production would be much more beneficial and valuable then even socialized medicine IMHO. We are already a long way toward that goal with the existing infrastructure.

2. Restoring funding and independence from corporate influence for the agricultural colleges.

3. Public education, geared at putting people back in closer touch with farming, so they are buying locally and in season and understand the fundamentals of food production and food nutrition.

4. Encouragment and support for growing and eating a broader range of varieties and cultivars.

5. Land reform that places farm use of land as a higher priority than development and exploitation.

6. Rebuild the infrastructure in rural communites - health care, schools, housing.

Hey Mike

I don't have alot to add to this but I didn't want you to think your posts were falling on deaf ears.

Hey Mike

I don't have alot to add to this but I didn't want you to think your posts were falling on deaf ears.

Thanks kid. Appreciate that.

Mike, you make really good points in re: the resources needed for people's cars etc in comparison to tractors...Dumping on farmers for any problems in our agricultural system is like dumping on line workers for the problems in our auto industry.

Not that I think anyone here is really dumping on farmers though.

If you want to know where your food comes from get to know your farmers, visit the farms. Whatever you do, don't shop at Whole Foods. I'll kick your ass if you do (or at least roll my eyes at you. It's like a reflex).

The words "Certified Organic" don't mean jack shit. As someone who (briefly) worked as an "Organic Commodities Broker" I can tell you it's all done by fax. Organic Flax Seed from Saskatchewan? Fax the cert. Organic Flax Seed from China? Fax the cert. Can't read the cert, it's in Chinese, oh well, put it in the file. Maybe it says "HA HA SUCKERS!!!" There are a few companies who are hardcore with their standards, they do their own direct purchasing, they visit the farms, they watch every step (I am thinking here of Eden Foods in particular but there are others). But most don't. Nature's Path cereal? Faxes. Kellogg's 'organic' varieties? Faxes. As of about 4 years ago, anyway, I know this for a fact.

I've been on the dirty smelly end of this too - having also lived/worked on a farm for almost 2 years. A farm that Mike may write off as a hobby farm or whatever but believe me getting up at 5am to milk the cows in the dead of winter and shoveling shit for 3 hours a day ain't no hobby.

But in a way, that's all irrelevant, isn't it? I mean, it's one thing to discuss what would farming look like in an ideal (socialist) world but the reality is, agriculture is a capitalist industry. Yeah, in theory the end product is food for people but there are 14 layers of other people in the middle making a buck off it. THAT is the problem. There are thousands of people in my (relatively wealthy) county alone who don't have enough food to eat while literally tons and tons of food gets thrown away. THAT is the problem.

In this world we cannot reform agriculture (or any major 'industry') in any meaningful way until we 'reform' our economic system as a whole. Doesn't everything else come later?

Wow, this is NOT what I thought I'd be posting in response to this thread.

My mind's got a mind of it's own.

But it's you guys' fault. If I didn't talk to you all so much over the last few of years I'd probably have gone back to that farm by now with no TV or newspapers and pretended the rest of the world didn't exist while I ate my fresh organic food and drank my raw milk and homemade cheese and yogurt and butter. Now I can't look at anything with out blaming capitalism. Bastards.

:wink:

...agriculture is a capitalist industry....

Great post Megan. Hey did you know that those earthworms you spent the weekend with are not native, at least in northern Michigan? I will have to dig up (ha ha) more info, but an extension agent told me that a while back.

One little point - agriculture has mostly not been a capitalist industry through the ages. Even now here it is remarkably socialized. Point being that reform may not be as difficult as we might imagine, and also that iot is a wedge for reforming the entire society.

We have a political problem, not an agricultural problem. It is about class and it is about power, it is not about farming methods.

The political problem is the primary problem, far over-shadowing all other problems, real and imagined. Solve the political problem and all the others will be greatly mitigated or eliminated. Solve the political problem and let's see where we stand.

If the political problem is solved I suspect that the suburbs as we know them will become a past number, can't exists without capitalism. The burbs are the lame-ass bribe, built on the back of the masses and nature, which keeps the whole Rube Goldberg scam going.

The political problem is the primary problem, far over-shadowing all other problems, real and imagined. Solve the political problem and all the others will be greatly mitigated or eliminated. Solve the political problem and let's see where we stand.

If the political problem is solved I suspect that the suburbs as we know them will become a past number, can't exists without capitalism. The burbs are the lame-ass bribe, built on the back of the masses and nature, which keeps the whole Rube Goldberg scam going.

I read through liberals tracts advocating everything from feminism to organic, searching for even the slightest hint of acknowledgement of power, of class struggle, of economic inequality. It takes a LOT of work to make sure that those subjects are scrupulously avoided in a nominally political discussion or a discussion of social problems, and it introduces a tremendous amount of confusion and irrationality. It can't be accidental. Disappearing class analysis is not neutral or benign - it is the cutting edge of sustaining ruling class power. The more emotionally charged the subject - "do you favor posioning people????" or "women are being raped and mutilated!" - the more difficult it is to introduce class analysis to the discussion. That can't be an accident either.

The political problem is the primary problem, far over-shadowing all other problems, real and imagined. Solve the political problem and all the others will be greatly mitigated or eliminated. Solve the political problem and let's see where we stand.

If the political problem is solved I suspect that the suburbs as we know them will become a past number, can't exists without capitalism. The burbs are the lame-ass bribe, built on the back of the masses and nature, which keeps the whole Rube Goldberg scam going.

I read through liberals tacts advocating everything from feminism to organic, searching for even the slightest hint of acknowledgement of power, of class struggle, of economic inequality. It takes a LOT of work to make sure that those subjects are scrupulously avoided in a nominally political discussion or a discussion of social problems, and it introduces a tremendous amount of confusion and irrationality. It can't be accidental. Disappearing class analysis is not neutral or benign - it is the cutting edge of sustaining ruling class power. The more emotionally charged the subject - "do you favor posioning people????" or "women are being raped and mutilated!" - the more difficult it is to introduce class analysis to the discussion. That can't be an accident either.

Despite how obvious class perspective is once you start looking at things that way, we are trained from the get-go not to see it. When we are taught history it is from the perspective of the 'winners' (mainly rich white men) and any instances when they lost is left out of the textbook. Class analysis is taboo. We are trained that way and it's no easy task to undo it. And the current popular political conversation perpetuates it.

To some extent I think you can't hardly blame people for not seeing it when they've been raised not to.

On the other hand, anyone who spends significant time on political discussion boards or reading/writing about political issues has enough time on their hands to learn the truth, learn a little history, and see what's going on. So a lot of folks are either willfully ignorant or consciously smothering class analysis.

One of our jobs is to inject class into every fucking conversation we have.

btw, I sure hope blindpig is right about the suburbs. I grew up in the burbs and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

But it's you guys' fault. If I didn't talk to you all so much over the last few of years I'd probably have gone back to that farm by now with no TV or newspapers and pretended the rest of the world didn't exist while I ate my fresh organic food and drank my raw milk and homemade cheese and yogurt and butter. Now I can't look at anything with out blaming capitalism. Bastards.

:wink:

Where is this place? I'll go work there,! I haven't been around that much! and my offerings are paltry and I'm used to no tv! I'll even dump the computer! Send me the address!!!javascript:emoticon(':wink:') (it does sound nice, but I think its too late even for a newbie like me!)

Who asked for this shit anyway? I don't think anybody did. Cellphones, VCRs &DVDs, monster car audio, GPS in cars, ad nauseum, do these things actually make life better? Or are they just another excuse for industrial output and the profits thereof? Full press propaganda effort, from product placement to seductive/ridiculous tv ads, sell to the dumb rich first and the shit rolls down hill. When the saturation point is reached and overproduction endangers the racket they'll just come up with some new gewgaw to keep the cash flowing.

Takes a lot of work to keep a scam like this going.

http://www.post-gazette.com/images3/20051212rube_goldberg_450.jpg

But it's you guys' fault. If I didn't talk to you all so much over the last few of years I'd probably have gone back to that farm by now with no TV or newspapers and pretended the rest of the world didn't exist while I ate my fresh organic food and drank my raw milk and homemade cheese and yogurt and butter. Now I can't look at anything with out blaming capitalism. Bastards.

:wink:

Where is this place? I'll go work there,! I haven't been around that much! and my offerings are paltry and I'm used to no tv! I'll even dump the computer! Send me the address!!!javascript:emoticon(':wink:') (it does sound nice, but I think its too late even for a newbie like me!)

Heh - well, if you don't mind the racist and elitist undertones of Rudolf Steiner's philosophy, let me know if you still want that info... the farm is in eastern Pennsylvania.

http://www.waldorfcritics.org/active/ar ... cofasc.htm (http://www.waldorfcritics.org/active/articles/Anthroposophy%20and%20Ecofasc.htm)

At the time I lived there (1997-1999) I didn't know much about Steiner, I just wanted to learn how to grow food. Fortunately the place wasn't a cult and I wasn't forced to study Steiner or sign on to his philosophy/religion, but if I knew then what I know now I probably woulda picked a different community to live in...

Little Green Lies
The sweet notion that making a company environmentally friendly can be not just cost-effective but profitable is going up in smoke. Meet the man wielding the torch
Ben Elgin

Auden Schendler learned about corporate environmentalism directly from the prophet of the movement. In the late 1990s, Schendler was working as a junior researcher at the Rocky Mountain Institute, a think tank in Aspen led by Amory Lovins, legendary author of the idea that by "going green," companies can increase profits while saving the planet. As Lovins often told Schendler and others at the institute, boosting energy efficiency and reducing harmful emissions constitute not just a free lunch but "a lunch you're paid to eat."

Inspired by this marvelous promise, Schendler took a job in 1999 at Aspen Skiing Co., becoming one of the first of a new breed: the in-house "corporate sustainability" advocate. Eight years later, it takes him six hours crisscrossing the Aspen region by car and foot to show a visitor some of the ways he has helped the posh, 800-employee resort blunt its contribution to global warming. Schendler, 37, a tanned and muscular mountain climber, clambers atop a storage shed to point out sleek solar panels on an employee-housing rooftop. He hikes down a stony slope for a view of the resort's miniature power plant, fueled by the rushing waters of a mountain creek. The company features its environmental credentials in its marketing and has decorated its headquarters with green trophies and plaques. Last year Time honored Schendler as a "Climate Crusader" in an article accompanied by a half-page photo of the jut-jawed executive standing amid snow-covered evergreens.

But at the end of this arid late-summer afternoon, Schendler is feeling anything but triumphant. He pulls a company sedan to the side of a dirt road and turns off the motor. "Who are we kidding?" he says, finally. Despite all his exertions, the resort's greenhouse-gas emissions continue to creep up year after year. More vacationers mean larger lodgings burning more power. Warmer winters require tons of additional artificial snow, another energy drain. "I've succeeded in doing a lot of sexy projects yet utterly failed in what I set out to do," Schendler says. "How do you really green your company? It's almost f------ impossible."

...

Environmental stewardship has become a centerpiece of corporate image-crafting. General Electric (GE ) says it is spending nearly all of its multimillion-dollar corporate advertising budget on "Ecomagination," its collection of environmentally friendly products, even though they make up only 8% of the conglomerate's sales.
...

But Schendler, who only a few years ago considered himself a leading proponent of this theory, now offers a searing refutation of the belief that green corporate practices beget green of the pecuniary variety.

Charismatic and well-connected among environmental executives, he has begun saying out loud what some whisper in private: Companies continue to assess most green initiatives with the same return-on-investment analysis they would use with any other capital project. And while some environmental advances pay for themselves in time, returns often aren't as swift or large as competing uses of corporate cash. That leads to green projects quietly withering on the vine. More important, and contrary to the alluring Lovins thesis, many major initiatives simply aren't money-savers. They come with daunting price tags that undercut the conviction that environmental salvation can be had on the cheap.

...

Much corporate environmentalism boils down to misleading statistics and hype. To make real progress, genuine accomplishments will have to be sorted out from feel-good gestures. Schendler no longer views business as capable of the dramatic change he thought possible eight years ago, the sort of change that corporations have grown accustomed to boasting about. His own employer is "a perfect example of why this won't work," he says. "We've had a chance to cherry-pick 50 projects and get them done. But even if every ski company could do what we did, we'd still be nowhere."

Little Green Lies (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_44/b4056001.htm)

Little Green Lies
The sweet notion that making a company environmentally friendly can be not just cost-effective but profitable is going up in smoke. Meet the man wielding the torch
Ben Elgin

Auden Schendler learned about corporate environmentalism directly from the prophet of the movement. In the late 1990s, Schendler was working as a junior researcher at the Rocky Mountain Institute, a think tank in Aspen led by Amory Lovins, legendary author of the idea that by "going green," companies can increase profits while saving the planet. As Lovins often told Schendler and others at the institute, boosting energy efficiency and reducing harmful emissions constitute not just a free lunch but "a lunch you're paid to eat."

Inspired by this marvelous promise, Schendler took a job in 1999 at Aspen Skiing Co., becoming one of the first of a new breed: the in-house "corporate sustainability" advocate. Eight years later, it takes him six hours crisscrossing the Aspen region by car and foot to show a visitor some of the ways he has helped the posh, 800-employee resort blunt its contribution to global warming. Schendler, 37, a tanned and muscular mountain climber, clambers atop a storage shed to point out sleek solar panels on an employee-housing rooftop. He hikes down a stony slope for a view of the resort's miniature power plant, fueled by the rushing waters of a mountain creek. The company features its environmental credentials in its marketing and has decorated its headquarters with green trophies and plaques. Last year Time honored Schendler as a "Climate Crusader" in an article accompanied by a half-page photo of the jut-jawed executive standing amid snow-covered evergreens.

But at the end of this arid late-summer afternoon, Schendler is feeling anything but triumphant. He pulls a company sedan to the side of a dirt road and turns off the motor. "Who are we kidding?" he says, finally. Despite all his exertions, the resort's greenhouse-gas emissions continue to creep up year after year. More vacationers mean larger lodgings burning more power. Warmer winters require tons of additional artificial snow, another energy drain. "I've succeeded in doing a lot of sexy projects yet utterly failed in what I set out to do," Schendler says. "How do you really green your company? It's almost f------ impossible."

...

Environmental stewardship has become a centerpiece of corporate image-crafting. General Electric (GE ) says it is spending nearly all of its multimillion-dollar corporate advertising budget on "Ecomagination," its collection of environmentally friendly products, even though they make up only 8% of the conglomerate's sales.
...

But Schendler, who only a few years ago considered himself a leading proponent of this theory, now offers a searing refutation of the belief that green corporate practices beget green of the pecuniary variety.

Charismatic and well-connected among environmental executives, he has begun saying out loud what some whisper in private: Companies continue to assess most green initiatives with the same return-on-investment analysis they would use with any other capital project. And while some environmental advances pay for themselves in time, returns often aren't as swift or large as competing uses of corporate cash. That leads to green projects quietly withering on the vine. More important, and contrary to the alluring Lovins thesis, many major initiatives simply aren't money-savers. They come with daunting price tags that undercut the conviction that environmental salvation can be had on the cheap.

...

Much corporate environmentalism boils down to misleading statistics and hype. To make real progress, genuine accomplishments will have to be sorted out from feel-good gestures. Schendler no longer views business as capable of the dramatic change he thought possible eight years ago, the sort of change that corporations have grown accustomed to boasting about. His own employer is "a perfect example of why this won't work," he says. "We've had a chance to cherry-pick 50 projects and get them done. But even if every ski company could do what we did, we'd still be nowhere."

Little Green Lies (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_44/b4056001.htm)

CNW's 'Dust to Dust' Automotive Energy Report

New Posting August 2007

Who Funds CNW Research? Since we are frequently asked who funds our research, including the Dust to Dust Energy Report, we post below a series of emails in response.

Response to Pacific Institute "Hummer versus Prius"

Added April 2007

Why 100,000 Miles for Prius?

Hidden Cost of Driving a Prius Commentary -- from Philadelphia Inquirer

NEW POSTING AS OF DECEMBER '06

Includes Vehicles Sold in Calendar Year 2006

This is the second year CNW has compiled the Dust-to-Dust energy cost per vehicle sold in the U.S. There have been some increases and some decreases. Remember, this the total cost of energy to society. If you would like more information, we recommend first reading the Dust-to-Dust report (PDF file below).

As Americans become increasingly interested in fuel economy and global warming, they are beginning to make choices about the vehicles they drive based on fuel economy and to a lesser degree emissions.



But many of those choices aren’t actually the best in terms of vehicle lifetime energy usage and the cost to society over the full lifetime of a car or truck.

CNW Marketing Research Inc. spent two years collecting data on the energy necessary to plan, build, sell, drive and dispose of a vehicle from initial concept to scrappage. This includes such minutia as plant to dealer fuel costs, employee driving distances, electricity usage per pound of material used in each vehicle and literally hundreds of other variables.

To put the data into understandable terms for consumers, it was translated into a “dollars per lifetime mile” figure. That is, the Energy Cost per mile driven.



This is a general-consumer report, not a technical document per se. It includes breakdowns of each vehicle’s total energy requirements from Dust to Dust but does not include issues of gigajuelles, kW hours or other unfriendly (to consumers) terms. Perhaps, in time, we will release our data in such technical terms. First, however, we will only look at the energy consumption cost.



The following 450+ page report will look at each section of the energy consumption for classes of models, individual examples and our own analysis of the data.



File Location: /automotiveenergy

Disk Space Available: 12,718 K free 37,281 K used

Name


Date


Size


Why 100,000 Miles for Prius.pdf

Mon Aug 20 2007 19:52
8 KB

DUST PDF VERSION.pdf

Thu Mar 29 2007 13:54
3 MB

Cost per mile by segment by model and sorts.xls

Fri Mar 30 2007 17:04
86 KB

Response to Pacific Institute.pdf

Tue Aug 21 2007 12:05
11 KB

Hidden Cost of Driving a Prius Commentary.pdf

Thu Apr 5 2007 11:48
9 KB

Who funds our research.pdf

Thu Aug 30 2007 10:44
14 KB

http://cnwmr.com/nss-folder/automotiveenergy/

Don't know about the source but it's interesting to consider.


Comparing this data, the study concludes that overall hybrids cost more in terms of overall energy consumed than comparable non-hybrid vehicles. But even more surprising, smaller hybrids' energy costs are greater than many large, non-hybrid SUVs.

For instance, the dust-to-dust energy cost of the bunny-sized Honda Civic hybrid is $3.238 per mile. This is quite a bit more than the $1.949 per mile that the elephantine Hummer costs. The energy cots of SUVs such as the Tahoe, Escalade, and Navigator are similarly far less than the Civic hybrid.

As for Ford cars, a Ford Escape hybrid costs $3.2 per mile – about a third more than the regular Escape. But on the whole, ironically enough, the dust-to-dust costs of many of the Ford non-hybrids – Fusion, Milan, Zephyr – are not only lower than comparable Japanese hybrids – Prius, Accord -- but also non-hybrids – Seville, Civic.

Spinella's finding that a Hummer on the whole consumes less energy than a hybrid than even some smaller hybrids and non-hybrids has infuriated environmentalists. And on its face it does seem implausible that a gas-guzzling monster like a Hummer that employs several times more raw material than a little Prius' could be so much less energy-intensive. But by and large the dust-to-dust energy costs in Spinella's study correlate with the fanciness of the car – not its size or fuel economy -- with the Rolls Royces and Bentleys consuming gobs of energy and Mazda 3s, Saturns and Taurus consuming relatively minuscule amounts.

As for Hummers, Spinella explains, the life of these cars averaged across various models is over 300,000 miles. By contrast, Prius' life – according to Toyota's own numbers – is 100,000 miles. Furthermore, Hummer is a far less sophisticated vehicle. Its engine obviously does not have an electric and gas component as a hybrid's does so it takes much less time and energy to manufacture. What's more, its main raw ingredient is low-cost steel, not the exotic light-weights that are exceedingly difficult to make – and dispose. But the biggest reason why a Hummer's energy use is so low is that it shares many components with other vehicles and therefore its design and development energy costs are spread across many cars.

I'm also not sure about the above quote but there it is for consideration.

It should be obvious that capitalism cannot give consideration to the environment, that is not it's brief. The overwhelming demand of capital growth will always supercede any and all else, even if there are good intentions.


We reject all euphemisms or propagandistic softening of the brutality of this regime: all greenwashing of its ecological costs, all mystification of the human costs under the names of democracy and human rights. We insist instead upon looking at capital from the standpoint of what it has really done. Acting on nature and its ecological balance, the regime, with its imperative to constantly expand profitability, exposes ecosystems to destabilizing pollutants, fragments habitats that have evolved over aeons to allow the flourishing of organisms, squanders resources, and reduces the sensuous vitality of nature to the cold exchangeability required for the accumulation of capital. From the side of humanity, with its requirements for self-determination, community, and a meaningful existence, capital reduces the majority of the world's people to a mere reservoir of labor power while discarding much of the remainder as useless nuisances. It has invaded and undermined the integrity of communities through its global mass culture of consumerism and depoliticization. It has expanded disparities in wealth and power to levels unprecedented in human history. It has worked hand in glove with a network of corrupt and subservient client states whose local elites carry out the work of repression while sparing the center of its opprobrium. And it has set going a network of transtatal organizations under the overall supervision of the Western powers and the superpower United States, to undermine the autonomy of the periphery and bind it into indebtedness while maintaining a huge military apparatus to enforce compliance to the capitalist center We believe that the present capitalist system cannot regulate, much less overcome, the crises it has set going. It cannot solve the ecological crisis because to do so requires setting limits upon accumulation—an unacceptable option for a system predicated upon the rule: Grow or Die! And it cannot solve the crisis posed by terror and other forms of violent rebellion because to do so would mean abandoning the logic of empire, which would impose unacceptable limits on growth and the whole “way of life” sustained by empire. Its only remaining option is to resort to brutal force, thereby increasing alienation and sowing the seed of further terrorism . . . and further counter-terrorism, evolving into a new and malignant variation of fascism. In sum, the capitalist world system is historically bankrupt. It has become an empire unable to adapt, whose very gigantism exposes its underlying weakness. It is, in the language of ecology, profoundly unsustainable, and must be changed fundamentally, nay, replaced, if there is to be a future worth living. Thus the stark choice once posed by Rosa Luxemburg returns: Socialism or Barbarism!, where the face of the latter now reflects the imprint of the intervening century and assumes the countenance of ecocatastrophe, terror counterterror, and their fascist degeneration.

http://members.optushome.com.au/spainte ... alist.html (http://members.optushome.com.au/spainter/Ecosocialist.html)

That lying bastard Al Gore and his ilk would have people believe that they can have their cake and eat it too. So seductive and convenient, particularly to those who think they "have it made". They can shop at Whole Foods and vacation at their pristine resorts, live their "enlightened" lives and put checks in the mail and they are absolved. All the while everything out of their sight, self selected tunnel vision, goes to hell.