today’s special: 3rd world war, the real thing

July 24th, 2011 § 2 comments § permalink

every time you buy something, you contribute to increasing the risk of the next large scale armed conflict on the planetary scale.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - MARCH 15:  Hundreds of rec...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

until further notice, fossil fuels remain this planets key resource. they are causing the largest political and economical benefits and risks for all the coutries in the world. they represent 95% of worlds enery sources and as basis for cheap plastic, they are part of nearly every product, without much ability to recycle them.

if we dont discover efficient replacements for both and actually start using them before we run out of oil, the world will experience resource shortage like never before in history. people stop being polite when they are hungry.

if we take processed food as prime example, lets compare a bag of flour american consumer buys today, with a bag of flour farmer brought from the mill only a hundred years ago. todays flour is enhanced, bleached, delivered with trucks accross the states several times, packaged in plastified containers. all of this is an ‘upgrade’ from plain flours core value, and all of this requires energy to to do.

A flour vendor at Alamudun Bazaar, Bishkek.

Image via Wikipedia

an even better example is bottled water. no need to explain the amount of excess energy needed to deliver it to your glass instead of the tap one. we could list infinite number of everyday things that got this ‘upgrade’ in the last century, from basics like water, flour and butter, up to frozen microwave dinner. even the apparently fresh fruit for instance – there is nothing fresh about most of it – it’s all last years crop, deeply frozen or preserved, so that they can guarantee even supply troughout the year. in other words, strawberries picked up now dont go to the shops, last years do.

if you could actually see the energy contained in the packaging and delivery of all the food you buy these days, your fridge would shine like a smal star. this shinning has to be powered by some sort of energy, most of the time that energy comes from oil. this shining is your everyday contribution to world conflicts that are caused by energy trade.

you can imagine the same applies to the content of your closets, storages, garages, offices, cars.

of course, you need this food and some other stuff to survive and to be able to do things yourselves. hopefully you do good things, that will offset your contribution to potential third world war.

the more unnecessary things you buy, the more unnecessary processing is involved in producing and delivering them, the lower your chances of successfully offseting the risk are.

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