Emergy - Embodied Energy
Embodied Energy
Things are so much more than what they seem at first glance. A child sees something that looks good and is soon harmed by it. That's the way so many consumers are with food. We want to believe advertisers that say something is healthy, when in fact it's been candied up and is full of additives that make it look good. And some of the ingredients of these "foods" serve (the manufacturers) by increasing rather than satisfying the appetite. So what should be making us stronger is actually making us weaker. The profit motive has made it easier to make money by lowering the quality of food.
Thoughtful people have come up with the phrase "embodied energy" to highlight seemingly unconnected impacts such as environmental degradation from the creation of some of our products, in order to try to help us step back from some of our destructive decisions. Though our first impulse is to choose the product or service that is least expensive, the survivors-to-be among us are making what used to be called "moral" choices. These choices complicate things but ultimately lead to a happier life. With the interactions between changes at this "quantum change" moment in history, we are at what might be called a time of Instant Karma. At this most turbulent time - with its glass half-full of miraculous technological advances and its glass half-empty with billions in poverty - the chickens are coming home to roost for those who don't yet know that the most powerful scientific law is Love. We humans have to radically widen our circles of love in each of our lives or we're going to go extinct. It's that simple. We're on what the Buddhists call the Wheel of Samsara - the constant seesaw from pleasure to pain, happiness to unhappiness that we swing back and forth with - until we learn to care about more than ourselves alone.
Looking at the bigger picture helps show how not all food is created equal. Some food is grown with the help of wage slaves. If food is gotten to your table with the help of a huge amount of gasoline to transport it, it has more of what is called "embodied energy" than something grown right nearby. If it was grown with the help of synthetic fertilizers, it has even more embodied energy because it took energy to make the fertilizers. With the human population and the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere mushrooming, and ecosystems collapsing, the costs of food and energy will continue to rise until we transform our society into one in which cooperation rather than competition is what makes money. A system which promotes warfare and enslaves and impoverishes vast sectors of our species as it tortures and destroys other life forms can't help but end up destroying even those of us who are on top at the moment.
Food that is procured with the least amount of destruction has the least amount of embodied energy in it, and so will be best in the long run. It is a mistaken assumption that we humans will always be the way we are. Civilizations come and go. Some functioned with human sacrifice as an integral part. We lately in the upper income sector of the planet have been eating more and more meat - not necessary and quite damaging as far as embodied energy. Eating the animals: poisons us via bioaccumulation up the food chain; takes vastly more energy, labor, feed, and other resources than if we would just eat the plants rather than feed them to the animals first; and ultimately forces us to compete ever more brutally on the international scene for fossil fuels.
If we stay narrowly focused on only our own short-term interests, we'll be destructive of others and we'll hurt ourselves too in the long run. The School of Hard Knocks is one of the Universe's most extensive learning institutions. The amount of suffering on this planet alone is unfathomable, but it has a reason (especially in this time of great change). We are being called to progress into a bigger community. No longer is it a good strategy to only love your own family or country or race or religion or political persuasion or even species. The key to sustainable agriculture - agriculture capable of keeping humanity healthy for the long term - is biophilia - love of all life. Everybody enjoys being in natural areas, surrounded by a myriad of plants, animals, and smaller life forms. The whole planet is at a stage at which we have to work as one unit, one being essentially.
We can stop making ourselves sick and stop needing to hurt others to make money. A better world IS possible. The children's movie called Monsters,Inc. pointed out that energy can be made just as easily by making people laugh as by scaring people. The nightmare world we are living in now will pass, but not until we stand up and dance to the new reality - that all life on Earth is one.
To get a glimpse into how such a seemingly delightful substance as sugar can so be insidiously packed full of unnecessary embodied energy in the form of human labor that you'd be far better off in the long run staying away from it, watch the trailer for the 2007 film The Price of Sugar at http://thepriceofsugar.com/trailer.shtml .
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Hazelwood Urban Gardens http://hazelwoodurbangardens.blogspot.com is in dire need of both those with administrative expertise and gardener volunteers. Please call Alex Bodnar, HUGS treasurer, at 412-422-1886 at his restaurant.
=======
Things are so much more than what they seem at first glance. A child sees something that looks good and is soon harmed by it. That's the way so many consumers are with food. We want to believe advertisers that say something is healthy, when in fact it's been candied up and is full of additives that make it look good. And some of the ingredients of these "foods" serve (the manufacturers) by increasing rather than satisfying the appetite. So what should be making us stronger is actually making us weaker. The profit motive has made it easier to make money by lowering the quality of food.
Thoughtful people have come up with the phrase "embodied energy" to highlight seemingly unconnected impacts such as environmental degradation from the creation of some of our products, in order to try to help us step back from some of our destructive decisions. Though our first impulse is to choose the product or service that is least expensive, the survivors-to-be among us are making what used to be called "moral" choices. These choices complicate things but ultimately lead to a happier life. With the interactions between changes at this "quantum change" moment in history, we are at what might be called a time of Instant Karma. At this most turbulent time - with its glass half-full of miraculous technological advances and its glass half-empty with billions in poverty - the chickens are coming home to roost for those who don't yet know that the most powerful scientific law is Love. We humans have to radically widen our circles of love in each of our lives or we're going to go extinct. It's that simple. We're on what the Buddhists call the Wheel of Samsara - the constant seesaw from pleasure to pain, happiness to unhappiness that we swing back and forth with - until we learn to care about more than ourselves alone.
Looking at the bigger picture helps show how not all food is created equal. Some food is grown with the help of wage slaves. If food is gotten to your table with the help of a huge amount of gasoline to transport it, it has more of what is called "embodied energy" than something grown right nearby. If it was grown with the help of synthetic fertilizers, it has even more embodied energy because it took energy to make the fertilizers. With the human population and the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere mushrooming, and ecosystems collapsing, the costs of food and energy will continue to rise until we transform our society into one in which cooperation rather than competition is what makes money. A system which promotes warfare and enslaves and impoverishes vast sectors of our species as it tortures and destroys other life forms can't help but end up destroying even those of us who are on top at the moment.
Food that is procured with the least amount of destruction has the least amount of embodied energy in it, and so will be best in the long run. It is a mistaken assumption that we humans will always be the way we are. Civilizations come and go. Some functioned with human sacrifice as an integral part. We lately in the upper income sector of the planet have been eating more and more meat - not necessary and quite damaging as far as embodied energy. Eating the animals: poisons us via bioaccumulation up the food chain; takes vastly more energy, labor, feed, and other resources than if we would just eat the plants rather than feed them to the animals first; and ultimately forces us to compete ever more brutally on the international scene for fossil fuels.
If we stay narrowly focused on only our own short-term interests, we'll be destructive of others and we'll hurt ourselves too in the long run. The School of Hard Knocks is one of the Universe's most extensive learning institutions. The amount of suffering on this planet alone is unfathomable, but it has a reason (especially in this time of great change). We are being called to progress into a bigger community. No longer is it a good strategy to only love your own family or country or race or religion or political persuasion or even species. The key to sustainable agriculture - agriculture capable of keeping humanity healthy for the long term - is biophilia - love of all life. Everybody enjoys being in natural areas, surrounded by a myriad of plants, animals, and smaller life forms. The whole planet is at a stage at which we have to work as one unit, one being essentially.
We can stop making ourselves sick and stop needing to hurt others to make money. A better world IS possible. The children's movie called Monsters,Inc. pointed out that energy can be made just as easily by making people laugh as by scaring people. The nightmare world we are living in now will pass, but not until we stand up and dance to the new reality - that all life on Earth is one.
To get a glimpse into how such a seemingly delightful substance as sugar can so be insidiously packed full of unnecessary embodied energy in the form of human labor that you'd be far better off in the long run staying away from it, watch the trailer for the 2007 film The Price of Sugar at http://thepriceofsugar.com/trailer.shtml .
=======
Hazelwood Urban Gardens http://hazelwoodurbangardens.blogspot.com is in dire need of both those with administrative expertise and gardener volunteers. Please call Alex Bodnar, HUGS treasurer, at 412-422-1886 at his restaurant.
=======
posted by St. Jim the Composter at 4:15 PM
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