~SUSTAINABLE LIVING FOR CHALLENGING TIMES

[Monksdream]

It isn't just the number of miles (kilometers for the rest of the planet) a tomato travels from a farm in Mexico to a supermarket in Portland, Maine so it can be consumed in February.

It's all that carbon based fuel used to produce the tomato.

The British woman who took over her daddy's farm is adding up all the costs that don't show up on the accouting ledgers at the supermarkets.

It takes carbon based fuels to make man made chemicals to grow the desirable food plants and to kill the unwanted plants. These chemicals aren't made on site. They're trucked in. Before they're trucked in, the makers truck them to distributors.

Dan Yergin is an energy consultant who wrote The Prize, considered a definitive historical narrative about the petroleum industry. In the concluding chapter, he wrote, "Ours truly is the Age of Oil."