Finding the low-carbon diet

Clearly, we cannot keep eating this way.

When you hear the words “peak oil,” the long lines at gas pumps during the energy crisis in the 1970s may spring to mind. However, the continuous decrease in the world’s oil reserves more likely will result in longer bread lines than gas lines.

Collectively, we Americans eat almost as much fossil fuel as we burn in our automobiles. American agriculture directly accounts for 17 percent of our energy use, which is the equivalent of 400 gallons of oil consumed by every man, woman and child per year, according to 1994 statistics.

How did this come about? We have seen a major leap in farm productivity in the past 50 years, with food production doubling and, in the case of cereal grains, even tripling. This amazing leap did not come from new farms or farmlands, because we have lost more than half our small farms in that same period. Farmlands are also in decline and being gobbled up by urban sprawl. These massive gains in food production are caused by the use of synthetic fertilizer and, to a smaller extent, better plant hybrids. “Two out of every 5 humans on this earth would not be alive today” without the widespread use of chemical fertilizer, says Vaclav Smil, a Canadian professor, author and energy expert.

We are eating fossil fuels in the forms of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. These marvelous inventions can be traced directly to chemist Fritz Haber. He won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1918 for “improving agriculture” through his invention of nitrate fertilizer. Unfortunately, Haber’s invention also was used by the Nazis to create Zyklon B, the gas used in the infamous death camps.

Idaho Mountain Express