I found the article, “Food or Fuel” to be the most interesting and informative of this month’s readings. I had always been under the assumption that using corn etc…, for fuel, had a negative impact on food supplies. Little did I know! I’m a bit relieved to know that by “going green”, we aren’t starving millions of people throughout the world.
What is alarming is the amount of food that we waste and/or use to feed livestock, when there are so many people in desperate need of these crops to simply live.
“For every one ton of US corn exported in 1996 to one of the 25 countries with the world’s most serious malnutrition problems…260 tons were exported to a wealthy Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development country”, and “More US corn goes to make alcoholic beverages in the US than is exported to feed the hungry in the world’s 25 most undernourished countries combined.”
O.k., so our driving habits and our fuel consumption don’t really hurt the world’s food supply, but maybe our drinking habits do. Maybe I’m being a bit too cynical, but I highly doubt that it would make much difference to us if we were starving people, as long as we were able to drive our vehicles in the manner we’ve become accustomed to, which is with little thought to the impact we’re having on the world around us.
I realize that our focus here is the impact of our use of the automobile and the resources needed to do so, but this article has made me re-think the way we take the availability of food for granted, while many others go without.
I recently read where one acre of land can produce 20,000 pounds of potatoes or 165 pounds of beef.
http://www.crescentlife.com/dietnutrition/food_realities.htm
I won’t pretend that I’m a vegetarian; I enjoy my steaks and fried chicken as much as the next guy, but it seems to me that we, as a society, should begin taking a more serious look at our eating habits, and not spend our time looking for an excuse to justify our unwillingness to invest in alternative fuel sources.
Sorry if I got a little off the track…
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About this seminar
How did you get here? Chances are, you drove. But how did we get here in a bigger sense? How has life in America developed to the point that cars are so tightly interwoven with so many aspects of our lives? This seminar will take a social scientific approach to exploring questions about how cars have become so integral to our everyday lives, how the various components of a culture may reinforce or challenge each other, and how we can rethink and rework some of these patterns to create cultural change in our own lives and in the world around us. We'll think about our relationship with cars; how they relate to the physical environment; how they get into our heads in the form of advertising, imagination, and desire; how cars are understood and experienced in cultures other than our own; and how we might start undoing or reimagining some of our more troubling patterns of automobile use.
Cars and culture links
Blog Archive
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2009
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May
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- Cars that fly--Farms that depend on oil
- Groovy Battery Car
- My First Car?
- Fuel or Food
- Expression of...something!
- Armed with love
- The first automobile?
- Fire Poker
- Thinking 1970s, Living in a New Century
- Vehicular Trauma
- What setting does this work in?
- Some car (and post-car) futures
- Path to Freedom
- The Road to Hell is Paved With Good Intentions: Vo...
- Cash for Clunkers
- Sunday's painting spree
- Almost Insanity
- Driving With No Destination
- I wish he had kept on going!
- California Giant Redwoods
- Book and Art
- Car Talk
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May
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