Oil Addiction

Call me a pessimist or apocalyptic, but our society has a serious problem on our hands. We are addicted to oil, or more generally, fossil fuels. Most of us could not function normally for more than a couple seconds without fossil fuels that power our computers and lights, provide the energy and material to manufacture everything we own and use, and provide us with the fuel to transport us. Over the past 250 years humans have replaced natural or current sources of energy with fossil fuels (stored carbon) for all our basic functions. This discovery of fossil fuels has fueled huge advances in human comfort, health, industry, transportation, and food production.

These advances would not be a problem if our ever increasing dependency/addiction to fossil fuels would not have us pointed in a rapidly approaching collision course. Actually, we are approaching a dual collision with dwindling reserves and with human caused environmental changes. The previously perceived limitless reserves of carbon under our feet from millions of years of decomposing organisms is now proving not as limitless in the face of our voracious appetite for energy. New studies now predict that we have already used up all of the most easily accessible and largest oil reserves. This point is called peak oil when the maximum rate of oil extraction has been reached. Oil will increasingly become more difficult and expensive to extract and will slowly diminish, while human demand for oil continues to exponentially increase. As Wes Jackson states, our use of oil is increasing faster and faster. Half of all oil ever used has been burned since 1980. One quarter of oil ever used has been burned since 1994. We are at a tipping point with oil (maybe not yet with coal) where consumption is going to start out pacing production.

With all these millions of years of stored carbon being released into the atmosphere in a matter of decades, it is completely rational to expect a major climatic change similar to other points in earth’s history when the atmospheric conditions were dramatically altered (i.e. – volcanic eruptions and meteorite collisions that led to ice ages and mass extinctions). We don’t know the exact point at which we will start seeing dramatic climatic changes, or what these changes actually will be, but it is quite clear that we will and are beginning to see the anthropogenic induced changes that may be far more costly to our species than simply running out of oil. Though I am not a climatologist, I think scientists are increasingly becoming aware that it won’t be as simple as global warming. Once the polar ice caps have disappeared, which will disrupt the oceans currents, weather conditions will be significantly altered. In summary, we have not a clue what we may be ultimately have put in motion since no other organism has ever so dramatically altered the natural equilibrium of our planet. In a sense, with the discovery of fossil fuels, humans have been living beyond the natural capacity of earth’s resources. Now, we are due for a correction whether we are prepared or not.

Like most addictions, it is very hard to admit we have a problem and even harder to change. I am dumfounded by the flat out denial by so many individuals I cross paths with. And, then with those who accept the inevitability of climate change, very few individuals are actively exploring how to change their lifestyles. Even amongst those of us who proclaim to be exploring alternatives to our fossil fuel addictions, there is not a single individual who I know that can claim to have fully been weaned off of fossil fuel reliance.

Where does that leave me on my quest to find sustainable farming systems that are not reliant on fossil fuels? What saddens me is that we have thousands of years of experiences with both successful and failed models of sustainable agriculture systems that are not reliant on fossil fuels, which we have blindly chosen to ignore over the last 75 years. With increased scientific understanding of soil and plant biology and chemistry, I have no doubt that we can find efficient systems that work with nature to feed the world. Instead, with our current farming practices, we have chosen to ignore (actually fight against) natural systems with the aid of fossil fuels. We now view the soil as a dead medium (which we have to keep dead) to grow our nutritional void crops. We use large machinery powered by oil to spray chemicals (derived from fossil fuels) that kill all undesirable (and most desirable) organisms to clear the way for planting the genetically modified seeds which are developed and patented by the chemical companies. Instead of using biologic sources to boost soil fertility and control pests, we now dump on fossil fuel-derived fertilizers (nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium). Our crops are harvested, transported and processed all at the expense of huge quantities of fossil fuels. At the end of the production line, it is very unclear whether we are farming crops or oil. This system has made the farmer slave to the chemical and oil companies, and unable to be an independent steward of the land.

Then we move on to livestock agriculture which the vast majority of our corn produced in the U.S. ends up feeding. Ruminants (cattle, sheep and goats) where brilliantly designed to harvest and utilize roughage (grass and forbs) as their primary nutritional source. Grasslands and ruminants co-evolved together and are mutually dependent on each other. For example, the hooves of ruminants are designed to dig grass seeds into the ground encouraging germination. The microbes in the stomach of ruminants have specifically evolved to digest roughage and cannot survive when diets are altered to starch (grain)-based diets. However, with the advent of fossil fuel-based industrial agriculture and the ability to produce huge quantities of cheap grain, it was deemed more efficient to pen livestock up, plow up the pastures for crops, and switch ruminant diets from forage-based to corn-based. Yes, animals get fat faster and produce more milk by shoving huge quantities of cheap calories down their throats. But, we enact violence against the natural system, starving those brilliant ruminal microbes that turn otherwise indigestible lignin into fuel for the animal, destroying that beautifully co-evolved grassland-grazer ecosystem, and ignoring the free energy of having the four-legged beast harvest her own meal from a previous perfectly balanced ecosystem that needs no chemical fertilizer or pesticide.

I don’t know if farming practices based on biologics and current energy can feed 10 million people, but I do know that the fossil fuel-based agriculture industry that is enacting fairly directs acts of violence against our environment is not going to continue feeding us for long. While fossil fuel-based agriculture has only been around for about 75 years, agriculture has fed humans for millennia. Thus, we have a long history to build on and new sciences to apply to learn to farm with nature rather than against nature.