There are no solutions within the power of food industry R&D executives. The only solution is the elimination of the competition for the food growing acreage. I don't think there is anyone with enough power to take on ADM and win.

Lets hope ADM and other ethanol makers prevail; the health of the world depends on it. Diabetes and obesity are global epidemics due to many factors but one of them is that calories are so cheap. We need to slow this crisis by making more ethanol and less food.

If that's your concern, we're better off killing the car and getting everyone back to walking and biking.

Shhhh, Keitherster100 feels important now - lets not harsh his buzz with facts or reality.

People were never back at walking and biking.

They were back at walking and riding.

Everybody had personal transportation vehicles which consumed cellulosic biofuel: horse and mule engines in carriages and chariots.

Jim Kunstler is ignorant if he thinks that is going to ever change. People had horse-scale suburbia before car scale suburbia. We'll go to somewhere in between with battery scale suburbia.

Everybody had personal transportation vehicles which consumed cellulosic biofuel: horse and mule engines in carriages and chariots

The evidence is very much against that.

I live in an early suburb, developed in the late 1830s, 1840s and early 1850s for the uncivilized Americans. 1.1 mile to the civilized French Quarter, 1 mile to the CBD from my home. My neighborhood (Lower Garden District) was largely upper middle class professionals and middle level merchants.

Several slave quarters remain but evidence of only one carriage house. Taxis were occasionally used, evidenced by a number of extant marble blocks on the curb to make it easier to get aboard (they are all "middle of the block" where they are left, so I assume common use by all).

The Garden District (two blocks away) was the home of millionaires (in 1840s gold & silver dollars). Carriage houses were much more prevalent but still in a minority.
Some may have been lost in the last 100 years, but I am confident that more than half OF THE MILLIONAIRES never had personal horses in New Orleans.

Instead they rode the St. Charles, Prytania and Magazine streetcars and shopped locally.

Best Hopes for more Urban Rail,

Alan

Good Keith! You found a topic you can post on every day!

Keep shining on you crazy diamond!

Thanks. I have taken a page out of the Peak Oil playbook. If you call something a crisis, the alternative automatically becomes reasonable. This propaganda thing is fun!

Don't forget-- you can drink that ethanol. And if you are squeamish, you can mix it with lemon juice and sugar. Lots of people live on that. Half a gallon of ethanol will keep you going for a couple of days, and with the accompanying anesthetic state, you you won't care where you are, and can just park under a bridge or in a cardboard box on the street and not know the difference. If things get bad enough (especially if you are white) someone will call 911 and take you to a hospital where they will patch you up a bit, maybe clean your clothes and even give you some advice about proper nutrition before they send you back out.

Actually, food in America has always been cheap, and junk food has always been available. What has changed is thirty years back we were participants in activities instead of laying back playing our video games or watching our big screen TV's. Go look at the many empty sports fields and playgrounds today. It’s amazing how many fat kids there are today. It’s not too much food, it’s too much laziness.

I don't think there is anyone with enough power to take on ADM and win.

Points at ADM and the lysine price fixing