Yet another reason to reduce our overconsumption ...

by: ejohnson

Thu May 01, 2008 at 22:44:27 PM MDT

Sure, food's more expensive, and that's an inconvenience for a lot of us.  But for the poor, particularly in developing countries, it's a matter of life and death.  Perhaps you've read about food riots overseas, or the fact that Brazil has suspended rice exports to make sure it's got enough food at home.

Toss onto all that the fact that most of our nitrogen fertilizer both takes a huge amount of energy to produce and uses vast quantities of natural gas as a feedstock.  It's bad enough if you don't have the money to buy the additional food your family needs.  It's even worse if you live in a country where few have the resources to buy the fertilizer needed to grow that food.

Bottom line is that energy is getting more expensive because demand is growing while supply is not.  While we figure out how to deal with the sunset of the fossil fuel era, we can do our neighbors in other countries a huge favor by getting much more efficient here at home.  It even saves us money.  Win-win.