All the Infrastructure, Trucks and Fuel You Can Shake a Stick At

Infrastructure

Moving food needs infrastructure. Growing that food needs infrastructure. Producing and storing just the right food to satisfy tastes and demands needs infrastructure. This kind of infrastructure needs resources in intensity.

We are running out of resources.

Trucks

Trucks move the majority of the food in this country to its final destination. Trucks need roads and bridges that can handle vast tonnage going over them over and over again, for years. Trucks need parts. Trucks need to be manufactured. Trucks need fuel. Fuel must be found, drilled for or grown, transported, refined, trucked to a fill station and finally sold. Those are the simple parts of the infrastructure. Break these simple parts down into the infinitum of their own infrastructures. These parts are contributing to the degradation of the land we all live on and the water we all drink. All this so we can continue as we are, without change and without modifying our habits.

Fuel

Fuel is best thought of as something to eliminate or minimize from our society and not something to produce in alternate ways so that current levels of consumption can be maintained.

Because

they can't.

That is part of the problem industrial society faces today. Current consumption levels of everything need to go down not stay the same or increase.

A good example of improper thinking in this matter is the idea that we can grow our fuel. Using food crops such as corn for biofuel is not something that could be sustained. Food is best used as food and fed directly to people. Corn is best as a food grain grown in companionship with other food crops, not mono-cropped as the majority of it is in this country.

Systems within nature interrelate, overlap and interact in ways that are not always noticeable until there is a grave problem. Growing fuel is not an interrelation. It is a profit maker for industrial agriculture which is contributing to the destruction of the whole world.

Do we need more energy? Do we need more power plants? More nuclear plants? Can’t we live within our limits? Can’t we find ways to change our habits so we can use less energy than is currently made? Can’t we live without the newest technological devices and gadgets? If so, maybe we can actually shut down power plants and not replace them.

Seeking alternative fuel sources to maintain current consumption sounds great and seems very “green”, but it is not sustainable. If consumption of fuel were to go down substantially and shift into renewable sources that do not deplete the land-base they are from, then maybe the fuel use could approach sustainability. But, this would mean more of an emphasis on changing people’s habits, awareness and consciousness,

not just technology.