My current source of cash is being one tiny cog in the giant machine that is international commerce. More specifically I push the paper that allows food to more across borders and every shift at work I’m brought face to face with the contradiction of fuel prices.
When I’m at the pump feeding the Subaru I’m horrified by the cost- $1.31 a litre! It’s highway robbery! But then I go to work and process dozens of truckloads of cheap food stuffs that have travelled literally thousands of miles just to get to the border and I think, man, is gas really so cheap? How is it that it’s a good business policy to ship trucklods of potatoes thousands of kilometers rather than find local producers?
The truth is that yes, gas is that cheap.
Looking at what a few dollars worth of diesel fuel in the tractor can accomplish in a morning - easily several weeks worth of bush clearing if done by hand - normally we just don’t realize how much waste gas has allowed us to get away with.
I don’t even want to think about how much energy is wasted in any large city every day just by the commute. Probably enough to build a pyramid. Crazy.
1 comment:
I reda an article about 4-5 years ago (which unfortunately i cannot find online) where the author calculated the real 'value' of oil, as compared to it's low price. Based on the energy in a barrel of oil, and the amount of human effort that would be necessary to match it he calculated the value of oil at $300,000 per barrel. I think he should have accounted/allowed for draft animals which might have lowered it to $30,000 or so.
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