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> "Our principal foods were bran bread, barley porridge, potatoes, greens, milk and some butter. Pork production was very low; hence the farmers ate all the por
by dmos62 10y ago
> "Our principal foods were bran bread, barley porridge, potatoes, greens, milk and some butter. Pork production was very low; hence the farmers ate all the pork they raised, and the people of the cities and towns got little or no pork. Beef was so costly that only the rich could afford to buy it in sufficient amount.”
This makes sense, as opposed to what the meat industry is currently[0]. It encourages deforestation for growing feed (and to a lesser extent grazing) and requires significantly more energy to produce, process and store than cereals or most edible things. Yet, often meat in a supermarket is as cheap as the economically (in the holistic sense of the word) cheap products.
The way I see it, this phenomena is caused by oil prices not accounting for the inevitable running out of oil[1]. The way we are going right now, you'd say we have a source of unending nourishment[2].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#Discoveries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#Discoveries
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornucopian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornucopian
- fpoling 10y agoCheap fuel is only a part of the problem. Another is disproportional subsidies that goes towards meat industry. In Norway this became ridiculous to the point when soy products in a shop may cost more than pork from pigs feed with bigger amount of soy.
- continuational 10y agoIsn't oil just getting more and more expensive to find and extract? We won't "run out" of it, it'll just become too expensive to use as fuel eventually.
- douche 10y agoYet oil is cheaper now than it was ten years ago, in raw dollars (before even factoring for inflation). The technology to extract oil keeps getting better.
- thebooktocome 10y agoThere is a finite amount of oil in the world.
- credit_guy 10y agoThere is a finite amount of everything in the world. What's special about oil?
- marze 10y agoThe term you want is EROEI. Energy return on energy invested. It has been dropping consistently for decades, in the case of oil. Price does not necessarily reflect cost to extract, because it also depends on market demand. Read "The Underground Economist". But yes, it is getting more expensive to extract, and yes there is a tremendous shift away from oil as an energy source taking place right now. Crude oil production peaked around 2005 and will be continuing to fall from here out.