Aside from the obvious such as a resident of northern Alberta would never have fruit to eat nor fresh vegetables in off-seasons, those who advocate or suggest that society can grow all its food locally fail to understand the economics, and concepts such as relative competitive advantage.

To begin with large mono culture operations, though not good for the environment, do translate into highly efficient (in terms of money an energy) operations-so much so that locally grown vegetable and fruit cannot compete on either cost or energy terms. True, moving produce a few thousand miles has a cost, but the cost per pound of produce becomes insignificant when compared to other input costs. This of course, assumes that Alberta or some other jurisdiction could actually grow its bananas, shrimp, oysters, and other foods that do not spring up naturally in that environment.

People often complain about free roads, and other subsidies. I agree that we should probably use subsidies to encourage more green technology, but when people state the roads cost nothing to the trucking industry or select a relatively small figure, $1.6 billion, which sounds large, they really need to check their facts.

For example, most jurisdictions in North America have heavy gasoline taxes, and those taxes, paid by the trucking industry, more than pay for the roads they use. The subsidy to the oil industry sounds large, but when one looks at the production, revenues, and costs, it becomes a drop in the oil bucket-a rounding error in the government’s books.

Something to keep in mind is that we shouldn’t be comparing a steer to tomatoes in winter. We should be comparing a steer to dried beans in winter — and beans are something that we can grow here in western Canada. Indeed, as you say, people might have to stop eating what they can’t grow themselves without huge inputs of energy and carbon-based fertilizers.

A lovely look at eating what’s in season is Barbara Kingsolvers’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

BTW, my students grow organic Canadian red fife wheat and we make pizzas from the wheat that they sow, tend, harvest (with kindergarten scissors!), thresh and mill themselves. Best pizza you’ll ever eat! There’s a picture of my students starting their pizza garden at
http://www.greenhearted.org/school-gardens.html.

I suspect that literacy is now overemphasized as the focus of our schools. All students and all teachers should be focusing their learning on food growing. When climate change meets peak oil, look out!

Leadership will have to come from the grassroots, I entirely agree. Too much rot at the top, and we need neighbour-convincing-neighbour rather than someone at the top simply ordering.

Yes, you have a point about oil, we get that! The people who come to your site come here because they know that you have an understanding of oil and its impact on our daily lives. But the big picture is that change is occurring, and in a democracy, change does not happen from the top down, it occurs from the bottom up. Give this momentum a chance, research the issues, provide links to grass roots orgs and White House docs, and then become a voice for change. Right now, it seems like all you care about is providing a doom and gloom scenario without any objective (or subjective) way for readers to be heard outside of this forum. For a former political candidate, that doesn’t sound like leading. It sounds like Glen Beck.

BTW, Interesting that the link “two of the primary reasons people go veg” redirects to a page on your website that is “The 4 reasons people go vegetarian”. Did you ever think that people are vegetarians because it just tastes better? That’s why I don’t eat meat.

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