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Topic: Richard Manning: The Oil We Eat
Part of the forum "Ishmael and Saving the World" in the IshCon Forum Archive
| Poster and Date | Post |
| comstock Fri Jan 30th, 2004 at 10:54 AM |
Friends, There is a great feature article in this month's Harper's Magazine (Feb 2004) by Richard Manning titled: "The Oil We Eat: Following the Food Chain Back to Iraq" It is an excellent piece that features many Quinn-views on the history of agriculture and its place in the Taker culture. Harper's does not keep articles online, so you'll have to pick up a copy at the store. Also, Richad Manning has a new book coming out soon that looks to be a good one, titled "Against the Grain : How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization" Book Description: "In this provocative, wide-ranging book, Richard Manning offers a dramatically revisionist view of recent human evolution, beginning with the vast increase in brain size that set us apart from our primate relatives and brought an accompanying increase in our need for nourishment. For 290,000 years, we managed to meet that need as hunter-gatherers, a state in which Manning believes we were at our most human: at our smartest, strongest, most sensually alive. But our reliance on food made a secure supply deeply attractive, and eventually we embarked upon the agricultural experiment that has been the history of our past 10,000 years. The evolutionary road is littered with failed experiments, however, and Manning suggests that agriculture as we have practiced it runs against both our grain and nature's. Drawing on the work of anthropologists, biologists, archaeologists, and philosophers, along with his own travels, he argues that not only our ecological ills-overpopulation, erosion, pollution-but our social and emotional malaise are rooted in the devil's bargain we made in our not-so-distant past. And he offers personal, achievable ways we might re-contour the path we have taken to resurrect what is most sustainable and sustaining in our own nature and the planet's." Here is the listing on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0865476225/qid=1075477656/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-6709770-0027246?v=glance&s=books Cheers, Matt |
| Huby7 Fri Jan 30th, 2004 at 03:13 PM |
Hi Matt, I read the article by Manning last week. I thought it corresponded nicely with Quinn's ideas. I think he even quotes David Pimentel a few times in the article. Ish heads would definately be interested in the article. Take Care Curt |
| jefgodesky Sat Jan 31st, 2004 at 02:02 PM |
Nice. This is one of the things most people don't realize, that the current "war for oil" motif is really the same thing we've always fought over: food. Technology can get you a certain distance, but eventually, agriculture needs conquest, and that can only be staved off for so long. Nice to see someone highlighting the oil=food connection; we need to raise the awareness of that little fact. |
| phusion Sat Jan 31st, 2004 at 04:25 PM |
"jefgodesky" wrote: Nice. This is one of the things most people don't realize, that the current "war for oil" motif is really the same thing we've always fought over: food. "Captured energy is the essence of life itself." -Dr. David Stuart We are really fighting for our lives. I can tell you it wouldn't take long, without our transportation network, for most Albuquerque residents to starve to death. Hell, this rice I'm eating is imported from India. And I doubt many people even know how to cook Yucca any more. |
| jefgodesky Sun Feb 1st, 2004 at 04:46 PM |
It's not even the transportation. Agriculture requires you to spend more calories than you get back. That requires cheating. It used to be beasts of burden--they could graze fields too rocky or inhospitable to be farmed, and turn those calories into work in front of a plow, so we were able to bring more calories into our farmwork than we really had. Today, we're using calories that have been put into oil and other fossil fuels. Tractors and all the machinery of industrialized agriculture; once, people ate grass (via the pack animals hooked up to the plows). Today, in the same sense, we're eating oil. Without oil, our current food supply would collapse--we don't have the animal resources to keep up our current levels of production. Oil is now the restricting factor for food production increases--which is why we'll fight for oil, but show little interest in the actual arable land of Middle Eastern deserts, so long as the spice keeps flowing. |
| JCamasto Sun Feb 1st, 2004 at 11:38 PM |
Plus the additional energy or “calories” for the construction, manufacture and transportation of all the materials, tools & machinery; the manpower bound to an infrastructure & social structure required to do so… And that of the oil used to manufacture fertilizers and pesticides.... And all of the externalized costs: waste, pollution, contamination, illness, death... Of simply reaping more than the earth can sustain... then poisoning it, as well... -Jim |
| Ghost Mon Feb 2nd, 2004 at 05:58 PM |
Hey, Jason. First of all, I dig the new look 8) Quote: Agriculture requires you to spend more calories than you get back. Can you think of any way to beat the Second Law of Thermal Dynamics and get back more energy than you put in? Quote: so long as the spice keeps flowing. Hmmm... nice Dune quote. Are you suggesting a link between Herbert's world and the Middle East? Or more specifically, that the spice in his book is a metaphor for oil? Peace and Love and Empathy, Matt |
| jefgodesky Tue Feb 3rd, 2004 at 01:22 PM |
"Matt" wrote: First of all, I dig the new look Danke schoen :lol: "Matt" wrote: Can you think of any way to beat the Second Law of Thermal Dynamics and get back more energy than you put in? You "cheat." Let's say it takes 500,000 calories to plant a field, and you'll get 250,000 calories in food from that field when it all grows in. Now, approached head-on, this is just simple starvation, no doubt about it. But the adjacent field is too rocky to plow, but it does have some grass: in fact, three sides of your crop land have grasses adding up to 100,000 calories each. So you send your animals there to graze; now you use your animals to pull the plows, and instead of getting the 250,000 calories from the field, you're also getting 100,000 calories from each of three adjacent grazing fields coming to bear, for a total of 550,000 calories--a 50,000 calorie profit. Of course, 300,000 of that is coming through your animals, and in terms of human calories spent and gathered, you're running a massive deficit--so like I said, you're "cheating." Now, instead of grazing fields, we dig oil fields, and use calories stored in the ground as oil. Same basic principle, though; you find some way to bring in more calories of work than you actually have. It's always a dangerous walk along the razor's edge of starvation, whatever way you cut it; why do you think only farmers starve to death? "Matt" wrote: Are you suggesting a link between Herbert's world and the Middle East? Or more specifically, that the spice in his book is a metaphor for oil? You mean besides the religious society oppressed by a foreign empire looking for that rare, precious spice that is the basis of all their power? No, not at all. :lol: |
| Ghost Tue Feb 3rd, 2004 at 02:08 PM |
Hey, Jeff. I don't see how your cheating model works. I've been trying to figure out where my complaint comes from, but I have no idea. Quote: why do you think only farmers starve to death? I don't. Suppose we start there. Peace and Love and Empathy, Matt |
| jefgodesky Tue Feb 3rd, 2004 at 02:27 PM |
Okay, well, they do. :lol: We all know of famines, of course. But that doesn't happen to foragers; in order to wipe out all of a forager's food the way a good famine does, you'd need to wipe out the majority of all life on the planet. Famines, of course, are relatively common--our domesitcated species are few and closely related, and can be wiped out by simple variations in weather or planting, or even by the simple disruption of a raiding party passing through. Basically anything can throw farming off and cause a famine, whereas nothing short of a meteor from space can make foragers starve. When Richard Lee studied the !Kung in the Kalahari, there was a massive drought going on--the worst in living memory. The !Kung's Bantu pastoralist neighbors were dying in droves from starvation. The !Kung worked, on average, two hours a day to get all the food they needed (this is where that 2 hour figure comes from--and it's an overestimate, because of the drought!). When farmers are under pressure, they die; when foragers are under pressure, they have to hunt and gather for a few hours a day, rather than a few minutes a day. But no one has ever seen a forager starve, and no malnourished forager skeleton has ever been found. 90% of all agriculturalist skeletons ever found have been clinically malnourished, but 0% of all foragers--and we have several hundreds of both. We even have them from the same populations, in the same area, at essentially the same time, and the same dichotomy holds. |
| jefgodesky Tue Feb 3rd, 2004 at 02:30 PM |
"Matt" wrote: I don't see how your cheating model works. I've been trying to figure out where my complaint comes from, but I have no idea. Don't worry, it took me years to figure that one out. :lol: |
| Ghost Tue Feb 3rd, 2004 at 02:56 PM |
Hmm... I can see how the prevelance of starvation is higher in agriculturalists (along with the crappy work day) but I fail to see how starvation is alien to foragers. Just last night I saw file footage of wild deer starving to death in the big Texas droubt of the 60's. I understand this: foragers have fluctuating populations on the short term, ie, a few people die every now and again. Agriculturalists' populations only increase, so no one dies on the short term but they suffer massive die offs instead. Peace and Love and Empathy, Matt |
| jefgodesky Tue Feb 3rd, 2004 at 03:25 PM |
Die, yes. Starve to death ... not so much. Food supplies still dictate populations without needing to outright starve people. If you're eating less than usual, even if you're not starving, it still has a negative impact on your health. It still puts you out there in harm's way more time. It still places more stress on your system, making you work a little bit harder for all the food you need, and thus wearing you down a little more. It still cuts fertility rates. I know natural selection is often portrayed in terms of starving or eating, but this is an exaggeration to illustrate a principle--you don't need people dying of starvation in order to tie populations to food supply. |
| cheech Tue Feb 3rd, 2004 at 03:36 PM |
Pirated copy right here: The Oil We Eat |
| JCamasto Wed Feb 4th, 2004 at 01:10 PM |
That is one gnasty pirated copy, and even with my pirated software, it is almost unreadable to these 20-20 eyes... doh well :( -Jim |
| cheech Thu Feb 5th, 2004 at 12:45 PM |
Okay - try again...I did a 'super-fine' scan..... Pirated and rescanned copy right here: The Oil We Eat The file size is bigger...hope this means its easier to read! |
| DavePollard Fri Feb 13th, 2004 at 04:51 PM |
Guess it's past the embargo stage since you can now find this article online. Since it directly relates to an article I wrote today on my blog, I've posted it in its entirety. After you read it, please scroll down to my 'systems approach' to the issues of overpopulation and food production -- I'd welcome your thoughts on my analysis, either here or in the comments area on my blog. http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2004/02/13/ |
| Huby7 Sun Feb 15th, 2004 at 07:00 PM |
I just heard about another great book that is out related to this article. The title is: THE PARTY'S OVER: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies. Industrial nations' fossil-fueled joyride is about to end . . . is anyone prepared? by Richard Heinberg. I see Derrick Jensen has praised it. You can check it out here:http://www.museletter.com/partys-over.html Take Care Curt |
| cheech Sun Feb 15th, 2004 at 08:52 PM |
hi dave pollard.... clicked on the link you cited above and got the following message :( If you're reading this page it means that the Blogs.Salon.com link you selected is broken in some way. Our apologies! Salon Blogs are maintained by members. The page you were trying to load has either moved or been removed by the owner of this blog, or the link that you clicked to get here is incorrect. |
| This page is part of the archives of the IshCon.org discussion forums, as they existed from November 2002 to January 2007. Some links and other content references may be outdated or broken. For more information about IshCon, visit www.ishcon.org. |