91 Days

Everyone has their pet theory on how gasoline prices are established in the real world. Of course, many people think it is simply tied to the price of crude oil and simple supply and demand. Wish it were so!

For a detailed analysis of the last three years of oil pricing and the influence of political and military events around the world on oil prices, please read this assessment and hope it isn’t at all accurate.

Three facts jump out of the document:

1. The United States has the largest demand for oil by far, using around 25% of the world's total oil production and 40% of the world's gasoline production -- with only about 5% of the total world population.
2. Approximately 2/3 of the oil and gasoline consumed by the U.S. is being imported from foreign countries. This dependency leaves the U.S. highly vulnerable to any supply disruption.
3. At any one time there are about 54 days of stock in the OECD system plus 37 days in emergency stockpiles. 54 + 37 = 91 days.

If oil stopped flowing for whatever reason – terrorism, war, natural disaster – it would only take about 91 days before the economy and world social order spiraled into chaos.

You didn’t want to hear that, did ya?

Eating Oil

No, the title of this post is not about that clunker of a car in your driveway, nor the greasy french fries you had for lunch yesterday. It is about the actual good stuff you put in your mouth every day that you might have purchased at the local farmers market.

A community with a local farmers market is a stepping stone on the path to community sustainability. In addition to the opportunity markets provide for social interaction, they offer excellent sources of food diversity, nutrition, and local employment. I especially value them because locally grown food generally requires less energy than imported food.

Juxtapose the status of farmers markets in your community with the statistic that 90% of the food consumed in Illinois is imported. Illinoisans spend millions of dollars for food and most of that leaves the local economy. An enormous portion of the family food bill is actually for the fuel to transport food to market. When you eat “foreign food” you are essentially eating the oil needed to get it to you.

“Virtually all of the processes in the modern food system are now dependent upon this finite resource, which is nearing its depletion phase.

Moreover, at a time when we should be making massive cuts in the emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in order to reduce the threat posed by climate change, the food system is lengthening its supply chains and increasing emissions to the point where it is a significant contributor to global warming.” (source)

In a multitude of ways locally grown and consumed food is the benchmark of a sustainable community.

A benefit of farmers markets is the savings they create in energy consumption. One way to measure that benefit is the ratio of energy outputs (the energy content of a food product) - to the energy inputs needed to produce, package and transport the food. Does it make sense to consume 127 calories of fuel to deliver 1 calorie of food? That is the energy ratio to ship iceberg lettuce to Great Britain. Where are the origins of your last banana, head of lettuce, pint of strawberries, and salmon steak?

With the coming of Peak Oil Illinois needs to do everything it can to transition to locally grown food sources.

The transition must begin now. Before the Illinois legislature is House Bill 1300 - The Illinois Food, Farms, and Jobs Act of 2007. HB 1300 proposes to:

“assemble a task force from diverse Illinois constituencies that are necessary to construct and maintain a complete in-state food system for the production, processing, storage, distribution, sale, and preparation of local and organic foods.

The Task Force’s objective is to identify barriers to Illinois creating locally grown and organic food system. The legislation calls for:

• Farmer training and development


• Helping farmers to transition to locally grown foods, USDA organic, and specialty crop production


• Improving consumer access to fresh and affordable Illinois-grown foods in both rural and urban communities (farmers markets, roadside stands, and new and existing groceries)


• Removing barriers separating landowners, farmers, businesses, and consumers desiring to participate in local and organic food networks


• Constructing a local food infrastructure (processing, storage, and distribution)


• Developing new food and agriculture-related businesses, such as on-farm processing, micro-markets, incubator kitchens, and marketing and communications businesses


• Research into best practices and opportunities for local and organic food production and handling.”

Communities should support such legislation as part of The Ultimate Answer.

Moonshine Madness

Political expediency in Illinois says you support farmers by supporting corn-to-ethanol proposals wherever they crop-up. Advocates argue that growing corn for ethanol production creates jobs in Illinois, brings higher farm income, liquid fuel energy independence, and cleaner air. According to the President Bush, ethanol is the magical elixir that will potentially solve every economic, environmental and foreign policy problem we have.

Just north of my home is the southern border of the Great Corn Desert. Within it sits the chemical giant, Archer Daniel Midlands, one of the largest agricultural processors in the world. It has offices and facilities on six continents and in 60 countries and supplies a large proportion of the ethanol used as additives for America’sgasoline stocks.

The company’s ethanol competition is increasing. There are currently 109 ethanol refineries operating in the United States, with capacity to produce over 5.2 billion gallons per year. Seven other plants are expanding and 70 new refineries are being constructed to produce over 5.8 billion gallons a year – all with financial subsidies from government. New ethanol plants are being proposed all over the state and you can be sure legislators will line up to pledge their support, however misguided.

Like it or not, there are actually certain limits to growth. US farmers are now using about 8.6 million acres of farmland to grow corn for ethanol. The percentage devoted to ethanol has already grown from 3% five years ago to 20% today. President Bush, always the math wiz and strategic planner, has set a target of 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels by 2017. To achieve that with corn would require the entire U.S. corn harvest, unless yields miraculously increased and space aliens added more sustainable farm land to North America.

Say good bye to corn flakes, tortillas, and mama’s corn bread!
In the not too distant future, will you even be able to afford a corn dog at the DuQuoin State Fair? What will happen to food prices? In Mexico, the price of corn tortillas - the nutrition foundation of its poorest citizens - has recently risen about 30%, leading to consumer protests and government price controls. America’s cattle, poultry and hog farmers are already struggling to adjust to higher feed corn prices. What will happen when more corn is diverted to fuel production? At the grocery check-out counter, consumers can expect to be paying more for all corn and corn-fed meat products.

Some ethanol proponents say switching to ethanol should at least reduce our dependence on unstable foreign oil supplies, right? Hardly. If all the corn produced in America last year were dedicated to ethanol production, U.S. gasoline consumption would drop by only 12 percent.

Is it worth all this trauma to forego development of more efficient automobiles or curtailment of Saturday teen night cruising around the town square? An article in the January 2007 issue of Scientific American concludes that

"Relying on ethanol from corn is an unsustainable strategy: agriculture will never be able to supply nearly enough crop, converting it does not combat global warming, and socially it can be seen as taking food off people's plates.”

I can only conclude that finding a replacement liquid fuel for transportation use without implementing significant energy conservation measures in both the production and demand side of energy use is not possible. Are we waiting for a miracle or has moonshine madness overtaken our elected officials?

Elected officials that succumb to the political expediency of further subsidizing corn-to-ethanol ventures are delaying other smart investments in energy conservation and renewable energy production that can form the basis of a stable and sustainable future for Illinois citizens.

A free railroad pass changed the planet

Around 1854 accounts tell of an unemployed railroad conductor and express agent named Edwin Drake who happened to be staying at the same hotel in Connecticut as an attorney looking to make a buck off so called “Seneca Oil”, a crude oil-based patent medicine being sold by hawkers since as early as 1792. The Seneca's are native americans that have occupied Pennsylvania since long before european settler occupation.

The attorney hired Drake in 1857 to visit Titusville, PA, a town on Oil Creek where people collected free flowing crude oil by damming the local creek. Apparently, Drake’s only qualification for this assignment was a free railroad pass remaining from his previous job.

When he got there his oil company boss gave him the phony title of Colonel despite having never being in the military so as to lend him more prestige in their nascent marketing efforts at selling the distilled oil. Apparently this trick works.

When Drake got frustrated with the inefficiency of being only able to skim about six gallons of oil a day off the dammed creek, he hired a salt well driller to help locate pockets of trapped oil. At a depth of 69½ feet they found their first black gold.

The rest is history. In 1859, Drake struck the first commercially productive oil well in the USA. It wasn’t a gusher, but it began the first great oil boom.

I suspect the residents of Titusville, thought they had found The Ultimate Answer to their dreams. Their answer was a non-renewable natural resource that took many millions of years to form that will be totally depleted in a geological blink of an eye.

The Seneca's had offerred a different answer to The Ultimate Question. The Senecas were perhaps the most sophisticated in all of the North-American Native cultures. With the exception of one tribe, they had adopted a democratic form of government after years of questionable leadership by Chiefs who had come into their positions out of lineage rather than virtue. "The Seneca women were in charge of elections, and decided who was to become tribal leader, Leaders usually held their posts for life, but could be removed if they became corrupt or proved to be incompetent; the Seneca political system also included a constitution, which is believed to have been the model for the American constitution." More.