Energy, Water and Land Use in Growing Our Food
In his response to my post on eating less meat, frequent commenter and really smart guy Glenn Doty writes:
….the average American burns 2 gallons of gasoline (72 kWh) per day in transportation. The production and distribution of is ~88% efficient, so this works out to ~82 kWh worth of energy required to transport us around. We Americans used ~35 kWh/day of electricity between home, work, and leisure. The average fossil electricity on the grid is ~34% efficient, so this works out to ~103 kWh worth of energy to satisfy our lifestyle. We eat ~3 kWh, we drive ~82 kWh, and we live, work and play in ~103 kWh… Yes eating meat is more energy intensive than eating salad, and yes animals fart… but in the grand scheme of things this is NOT the bigger issue.
Glenn appears to be comparing the energy intensiveness of our food with that of our transportation. I don’t see the validity of this comparison, and point to this analysis of the resources (energy, water and land use) required to grow beef vs. vegetables. In summary, growing a calorie of beef takes 20 – 25 times more fossil energy, 200 times more water, and about 9 times more land than growing a calorie of vegetables.
I’m what could be called a “compulsive guesser.” When someone asks me something – it could be the outdoor temperature or the latitude of Sri Lanka — I always take a guess before looking it up.
Those keeping track of the 
Yesterday I finished Gore’s new book THE FUTURE: 6 DRIVERS OF GLOBAL CHANGE. Overall a good read. But Gore pushes mostly centralized political policies and corporation-led mostly high-tech changes to reach his proposed solutions to so many interrelated problems. He correctly cites global rising energy usage and wants more energy efficiency and renewables, but says nothing about substantially reducing overall energy use, including how to start a global trend to lower the rates of energy usage growth.
I hope everyone is enjoying this day on which we thank our mothers for being the wonderful and kind people they are, and express our gratitude for the numerous sacrifices they made on our behalf.
Here’s a video on 
I thought readers might appreciate this collection of 
It’s been only two years since FERC (The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) announced that it would allow DR (demand response) to be treated the same as any other dispatchable power source. But in those two years, a great deal of work has gone into implementation, and, according to this 
I learned recently that long-time 2GreenEnergy Associate Bill Paul has been doing some truly excellent work in an area of tremendous importance: calling attention to crimes against the environment. Not only is his work of great value, it’s easy to absorb; he produces short videos that, IMO, have huge impact and “punch.” I hope you’ll check them out. Here’s the first of what I hope to be a great number of posts on the subject:
In our wide-ranging discussion of our civilization’s sustainability, I normally sidestep the issue of religion. Yes, I occasionally write something opposing some of our nation’s elected lawmakers, ostensibly our most capable thinkers, who build their 
