Biofuels and the Rise of Nationalistic Environmentalism
Alexis Zeigler
The current food crisis was terribly predictable, and has been anticipated for several years now. Starting about seven years ago, the world started using more food than it was producing, steadily eating into stored supplies. As grain stores have shrunk year by year, the biofuel movement has taken off like a virus. Rapid biofuel expansion has been propelled by a concern over American dependence on imported oil, as well as concerns about "sustainable" energy supplies and carbon emissions.
Meanwhile, environmentalists concerned about our future food supply were sounding the alarm, and being ignored. For some, it was terribly obvious that a disaster was brewing. While there has been considerable debate about the energy returns from various biofuels, no one debates the basic math. It takes about 10 acres to feed a car on ethanol for a year.[1] The world supply of grainland is about three-tenths of an acre per person, and is expected to shrink to less than a quarter acre by 2020.[2] Clearly direct market competition between rich and poor for land to feed cars or people could be disastrous. Given the relentless fall in holdover stocks - grain in storage - over the last few years, price spikes were inevitable.
As an environmental activist, I was wary when my friends started enthusiastically grabbing used cooking oil from behind restaurants. I did not think they were aware of the political Frankenstein they were creating. American consumers are both enormously powerful and very disconnected from the natural world or any consideration of the limits of the Earth on which we all reside. Now that a movement has been created to expand biofuel production rapidly, with support from everyone from President Bush to large fraction of the environmental movement, it will be difficult to stop.
The growth of the biofuel craze has been very rapid. For those that would argue that biofuel does not compete with food supplies, the actual behavior of the market, even at this early stage, belies such contentions. Radical increases in food prices caused in large part by biofuel expansion have triggered food riots in Haiti, Guinea, Mauritania, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Mexico. (That list is likely to be longer by the time you read this.) Even in Italy consumers have caused public disturbances over the rising price of food. Biodiesel plants built in Malaysia now lie idle, never having been put into production, because those odd Malaysian peasants are demanding the right to eat their palm oil. Meanwhile, in Swaziland, a small impoverished nation in South Africa where forty percent of its people are facing food shortages, the government decided last year to start exporting biofuel.[3] The World Bank has stated that 33 countries may be at risk from destabilization because of skyrocketing food prices. [4]
When I first started writing about this issue several years ago, global grain stocks were at their lowest point in over 30 years. Grain stocks have continued to fall. We are perched on a precipice where a drought or other disruption of production in grain-producing regions could cause severe instability in both food and energy prices. Such instability could trigger widespread famine. Such concerns are not restricted to fringe critics. Goldman Sachs is predicting that "vulnerable regions of the world face the risk of famine over the next three years as rising energy costs spill over into a food crunch..."[5] The number of people in the world suffering severe undernourishment was declining until the late 1990s. Now it is rising.
Currently, 5% of the global food supply is going into biofuels, and that fraction is growing very rapidly - some would say virally.[6] If the current rate of expansion of biofuel continues, ethanol plants will be using almost all of the U.S. corn crop within 5-7 years. In response to this growth rate and the dangerous potential outcomes it implies, the United Nations Rapporteur on Food has called for a moratorium on biofuels expansion. The European Union is drafting legislation so that they will only import biofuels that are produced "sustainably," but the definition of that term is still up for debate.
The carbon-saving aspect of biofuels has turned out to be an illusion as well. Millions of acres of forest, including enormous areas of tropical rainforests in Malaysia and Brazil, are being destroyed to produce biofuels. On average, biofuels add more carbon to the atmosphere than fossil fuels.[7]
And how is the U.S. responding? In the fall of 2004, congress passed a tax relief bill supporting biodiesel, and the new energy bill passed by Congress in 2007 supports a rapid expansion of ethanol production.[8] President Bush has spoken openly in favor of biofuel, and has visited biofuel plants to show his support.[9] Liberal campaigner, musician and activist Willie Nelson has been advocating the use of biofuel. Conservative governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has been promoting biofuel hummers in California. At the 2007 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, General Motors released their new ethanol Hummer. Virgin Atlantic, one of the world's major airlines, announced in January 2008 that it is going to conduct the first commercial flight using biofuels on board a Boeing 747 (one of the world's largest airliners).[10]
It is no surprise that conservatives are in favor of biofuel given their traditional nationalistic focus. The number of liberally minded, educated environmentalists who favor biofuels expansion is more surprising. I have had many arguments trying to decipher how so many smart people could fail to see the obvious connections. Cars are very hungry, consuming the grain that would feed 25-30 people. The global market is highly integrated, one big pond where commodities move fluidly and markets ratchet upwards any time the supply tightens relative to demand. Are these facts not painfully obvious?
They are, and the solution to the question of why so many people would be so foolish is sobering. American environmentalism has become increasingly nationalistic. If one takes a step back from biofuels and looks at the broader environmental movement, the dominant trends are towards "green capitalism," or "Natural Capitalism" to use the title of a book by Paul Hawkens and Amory Lovins. According to this theory, the new green technologies are going to create "green" jobs, the economy will continue to prosper as workers construct windmills and insulate sophisticated energy-sipping homes and offices. Consumers will buy compact fluorescent bulbs and efficient cars, and we will steadily reduce our energy use. This "green capitalism" is by far the dominant trend in environmentalism today, with luminary conservatives like George Shultz being among its more prominent advocates.
It sounds great. But there is a side to this movement, of which biofuel is emblematic, which is far darker than any of its current advocates dare recognize. Everyone, save a few winguts, acknowledges that oil is a finite resource. A few years ago, some oil geologists started suggesting that the peak of global oil production might be very soon, now or in the next few years, rather than decades away as has been assumed. At first they were ridiculed. But global oil production has remained nearly flat for several years, demand pressures have continued to increase, and prices have spiked.
It now seems very likely that we are at or near a peak in global oil production. The global industrial economy is facing limits and depletions of many other resources as well, prompting the prominent peak oil theorist Richard Heinberg to title his most recent book Peak Everything. (The idea that industrialism could face multiple limits of resource availability has been around since at least the 1972 publication of The Limits to Growth. Though that book sold millions of copies, enormous efforts were subsequently expended in suppressing the distressing conclusions reached therein. That in itself an instructive story. [11])
Some of the advocates of green capitalism -- of which there are many at this point -- are aware of the likely pending limits of oil and other resources. They paint a scenario of the continued growth and prosperity even as we downscale our energy use and pollution using more efficient technologies and design. Some are more optimistic than others about exactly how much oil we might have left, and how resource limitations might impact future economic growth. The green capitalist model, as espoused by a number of its most prominent adherents, suggests that we can feed 9 to 12 billion people in the coming decades even with falling oil supplies and significant biofuel development by applying green technologies.[12] So why are we facing a "risk of famine," to use Goldman Sachs' words, over forty years early and with 3 to 6 billion too few people?
Because numbers on paper do not equal reality on the ground, and because nationalistic environmentalism focuses almost entirely on the well-being of the global upper class. It is probably true that it is possible for a limited number of people to transition to a highly efficient, consumer society, but only if a couple billion of our fellow humans suffer deprivation, or perhaps even outright destruction, to make way.
The industrial economy is intimately, terribly dependent on oil. So much so that we can hardly conceive how much of it we use. Richard Heinberg maintains that a single teaspoon of oil contains as much energy as eight hours of human labor. In practical application, that is probably a slight exaggeration. Nonetheless, we have gotten accustomed to using extraordinary energy. We have god-like powers at our fingertips when we turn the key to drive down to the corner store for a pack of chewing gum.
Under conditions of expansion, the market economy appears benign, even progressive. It is no coincidence that the peak of democratic development in the archaic Greek and Roman civilization occurred at the peak of the colonial development and prosperity. As the traders gained power in these societies, the market expanded, and it was economically important for civil liberty to expand as well. So too in modern times. The expansion of democracy and civil liberty has followed on the heels of the expansion of colonialism and the growth of markets. There is not a simple linear relationship between the economy and democracy, but over time there are powerful forces that make certain kinds of social change more likely at particular times. Ecology sets the stage for economy, and economy favors different social movements at different times.
Nearly every academic, political and religious leader tries to make their own ideas sound more important than the supply of oil, topsoil, or the health of the forest. The end result is that while there is a direct relationship between ecology and democracy, knowledge of that connection is suppressed by leftist and rightist alike as they strive to make their ideas and policies seem more important than nasty things like dirt and oil.
As a result of this odd historical conspiracy, we are suffering a terrible illusion. We imagine that we have constructed our democracy, expanded our civil liberty, and built an industrial economy in defiance of gravity, without regard for topsoil, clean water, or the part of the world that we label as natural "resources." The truth is that fossil fuels have financed a breakneck expansion of industrial development and trade that has powerfully favored social movements that seek to expand our civil liberties. Just as the democracy of Greek and Roman civilizations collapsed as their colonialism became more embattled and their economies struggled, so will ours.
As much as we may sing the praises of the open, democratic society, that kind of society is very well suited to the position of the winner in the competition for growth and dominion. What is the relative strength of authoritarian governments? They command effectively and efficiently. They bring people together to undertake more aggressive foreign policy, be it military or economic warfare, that would otherwise divide a more civil society. We may demonize particular individuals in the current American leadership that seek to stuff our civil liberties into the closet with the Patriot Act and other related legislation even while they engage in ever-escalating oil warfare, but the underlying transition is not about personal evil. There is no way the United States and the global consumer class can maintain its dominion without powerful military pressure, and that martial stance will favor authoritarian political development. Biofuel is environmental nationalism, and it is the cutting edge of this process.
As radical as it may sound to suggest that democracy as we know it will soon fall at the feet of a nationalistic environmentalism, a movement that may include the destruction of the global poor among its methods of achieving "sustainability," it seems fairly obvious if one simply examines current trends. The facts are plain, if we choose to see them:
1) Oil is a finite resource. We are very likely near or at peak production.
2) The Earth itself is finite. Economic growth as we currently define it cannot continue forever.
3) Ecological limits have impacts on our economy, and our economy has powerful impacts on our politics.
4) The constricting of global economic growth will not favor a continued expansion of democracy and civil liberty, and will likely favor the growth of more powerful centralized authority among the dominant powers.
5) The wealthy and powerful classes of the world are going to try to maintain their position of privilege in consumer societies into the future. The attempt to do so while the energy pie was expanding appeared benign. As the energy pie shrinks, the only way the consumer society can continue to grow, regardless of the development of more efficient technologies, is by taking an ever greater fraction of a shrinking supply of energy and other resources. If the pie is getting smaller, we can continue to eat gluttonously only if we take a larger share of what's left.
6) The consumer society will be sustained only at the cost of a very aggressive foreign policy on the part of the industrial powers. The people whose resources we are taking will fight back, albeit haltingly and uncertainly. The resulting tensions will favor authoritarian rule in the poorer nations as well.
As a result of the aforementioned, conservatives will embrace nationalistic environmentalism, and will do so in the coming years with a greater fervor than liberals ever could have imagined. We will see the rise of a passionate, chest-thumping environmentalism, built on the foundation of green capitalism, that dwarfs the current movement.
The nationalism of the future will not be like the nationalism of the past. Past fascistic movements were often highly populists, espousing the highest ideals and employing glorious symbolism of a brighter future. The modern nationalistic environmentalists will not paint bloody pictures of death and destruction. Rather, we will, as in Swaziland, be bringing development at last to the poor, even as we drive them off of their land and replace their "inefficient" farming methods with modern "sustainable" biofuel production. On April 29, 2008, President Bush made a speech in which he ardently declared that biofuel expansion is not related to the rise in food prices, regardless of all the evidence to the contrary.[13] This is the new face of environmental nationalism. It is endorsed by a broad spectrum of the body politic. It denies the plainly obvious, hides behind the moral neutrality of the market, and it is likely sowing the seeds of authoritarian rule and global-scale mass starvation of the poor.
The power of the market economy is not ultimately efficiency, it is rather the hiding of the oppressor. If one race takes land and energy from another, then there is a target against which the poor can focus their organizing energy. But who is to blame for hunger in a global market economy? That is the real power of the market. It utterly defeats revolutionary impulses before they can bloom. The global economy has become a maze of non-racial, non-national, nominally non-class based commerce with no one in particular to blame for any evil that should befall any particular individual or group.
In this case, "nationalism" as we have known it in the past becomes something of a misnomer. The global elite, however loosely defined, bear more in common with each other than with their fellow national citizens. Civil liberty has always been largely defined by class. We developed a very black-and-white mythology of fascism as we exited World War II that does not well define our future.
The elite of the archaic empires possessed no shortage of civil liberty, nor the elite of any of the modern authoritarian movements. Powerful institutions adapt, and the global corporate economy is not going to lie down and die. Rather, we will see the distress creeping up from the bottom, as we are now. Those at the top will more aggressively label anyone who challenges their privilege, or their right to turn food into fuel via the holy market economy, as a "terrorist," the modern day "barbarians at the gate."
At what point one chooses to use such loaded words as fascism, authoritarianism, imperialism or the like will depend largely on where one finds oneself in the grand hierarchy of the market. The noteworthy point here and now is that western liberalism, in as much as it may have once held pan-human ideals, is quickly being drawn into the conceptual framework of environmental nationalism. This in turn will leave liberalism absolutely toothless to oppose more aggressive nationalists in the future. Are any current prominent democrats opposed to biofuel? What does that tell us about the future?
There is already an unholy alliance brewing between some radical ecologists, anti-immigration organizations, and those who see limiting population as a very high priority. (I put myself in this latter category.) The history of fascistic movements scapegoating minorities and immigrants need not be elaborated upon. As we face ever increasing oil prices, it is highly likely that the far right will wed the tools of old (racist scapegoating) with a version of "ecology" that seeks to "Save the Earth" at the expense of the global poor. We see the lace of this wedding being spun in the global warming debate, wherein the right is already trying to hold the global poor accountable for climate change. Biofuel is more urgent, a much sharper sword cutting down the hungry of the world in the name of green capitalism even as you read these words.
The current environmental movement is taking the easy road, telling people what they want to hear. They are telling the public that we can continue the current consumer society if only we do it with more efficient cars, "sustainable" biofuels, and compact fluorescent light bulbs. By taking the easy road today, we may gain a few points of efficiency of energy use. But because we are failing to speak the truth, we are delivering the future to a potentially murderous ecofascist movement. Were it not for the current state of the biofuels movement, that would sound absurd. Given that many of the global poor are facing famine in 2008, when oil is still quite plentiful, is it not clear the foundation we are building? The truth is that we have a choice between a substantial changes in our lifestyle or a global war between rich and poor of monumental scale. Anyone who believes we can fight such a war in a nice civil, democratic society knows little about history.
It is humiliating, it is offensive, and we do not want to see it; we do not want to admit that our democratic consumer society is not the glorious invention of great minds impervious to the pressures of history. We have no more conscious awareness of the greater processes of cultural change than did the members of archaic civilizations. This is the real problem that we face. Simply repairing the problem of ecological sustainability, from a technological standpoint, has been solved many times over.
It would be simple indeed to feed and house our citizens with a tenth of the resources that we are currently using in the wealthy nations if that were our goal. That is more than literary grandstanding. I have built houses heated and powered with sunshine. I have studied the results, seen the failures and successes. Nationalistic environmentalism says we can create a solar suburbia, the green consumer society. That will come only at the price of murder on a global scale to finance our consumption.
The reality is that if we undertake to choose how we live, to purposefully change the structure of our society so that we are not living alone in large houses, not commuting to work, then the technological side of sustainability is very simple indeed. I have built houses that use 90% less energy per inhabitant than the American average, and done so at very low expense. But they are not suburban tract homes. Far from it. They are urban and rural cooperatives. Cooperatively based societies, the kind in which most of humanity has always lived, can achieve high standards of living with a tenth of the resources that Americans currently use without any new technologies. If we are talking about global solutions, is it even possibly to apply expensive alternative energy systems on an individual or single-family basis on a global scale? The answer, very clearly, is no. Social design - how and where we choose to live - and cooperative use are far more important the new technological gadgets
The truth is that fossil fuel machines are well suited, from an economic perspective, to individual use. They are cheap up front, though their long-term running costs are high. Machines used by individuals are not used intensively, so the cheap up-front cost dominates consumers' concern. But for machines that are used more intensively, as when they are used cooperatively, the higher up-front costs of efficiency and alternative energy are more than offset by the savings resulting from intensity of use. What if each city block had a community laundry instead of every individual or small American family living in a large house with their own washer and dryer? You would not need to persuade people to do the right thing. The people who ran the community laundry would take the obvious path. They would install solar water heaters, and possibly other energy-saving technologies, because it was economically rewarding to do so. Regardless of law or ideology, simple economics would favor efficiency and alternative energy.
Solar water heating in a community laundry does not relate to biofuels directly, but the same logic applies. The real solution to the liquid fuel issue is not efficient cars or biofuel. It's design. The real solution is to live close enough to where you work and play so you do not have to drive. That kind of logic on a global scale will work. Biofuels will not, not without mass market murder as its companion.
The problem is that no one has an answer to the end of growth. The expansion of civil liberty has been built on economic growth. Every movement from Aryan Nationalist to Marxist has built movements based on telling their constituents they can face an ever-brighter future of industrial wealth. And now nationalistic environmentalism is assuming growth is unstoppable and making deals with the devil.
The problem with nationalistic environmentalism, even beyond the potential for some very ugly political outcomes, and that is that it will not work even from an ecological perspective. Long after the current wave of industrial growth has come to an end, whatever the fallout may be, there will still be humans living on the Earth. Those humans will still face the problem of organizing themselves in a manner that does not serve to suppress social awareness. Biofuels and other "sustainable" technologies seek only to put a thin layer of green paint over a consumer society that is by the day growing more economically polarized. That polarized society will never be sustainable. A polarized society actively seeks to repress the social awareness of its citizens, to engage in endless witch hunts against communists, drug dealers, and terrorists of all sorts. It is a blind social system that cannot wisely adapt to the future.
The ecological problems we are facing seem so enormous that we feel compelled to look for shortcuts. Every thread of our political fabric is woven from expectations of growth. The end of growth is so inconceivable, we have no answer to it. The truth is that the answers are both nearly impossible and terribly easy.
The first solution is simply truth-telling. When people educated about the issues consistently hide the truth and tell people what they want to hear, we enter a never-never land where compromises get compromised and mass-marketed ecological niceties become the building blocks of ecofascism and biofueled mass murder. The truth is that our lifestyle is going to change, whether we like it or not. The only choice we get to make is whether we lead the curve or are led by it, whether we create history or are forced by history into circumstances we never would have chosen.
The changes we need to make are difficult because getting large groups of people to do anything is difficult, and industrial civilization as a whole is in a state of collective psychosis currently in regards to growth. Almost every word uttered on the evening news assumes continued growth for years and decades to come. It is no wonder that so many people have so little understanding of the scale of change we need to undertake. The very fabric of our cultural reality has become divorced from the basic fact that the world on which we live is finite.
The changes we need to undertake are easy because they do not demand a mass movement at first. Movements always start at the fringes. Wise policy at the top would be helpful. But it is not likely, and we do not need it. The process of economic localization, of building a sustainable and democratic society from the ground up is already being undertaken in many corners of the world, among the least privileged of people.
It is a near certainty that the dominant powers in the U.S. and Europe will move right in the coming years as the oil belt tightens. That is the only way these privileged nations will be able to maintain their privilege. The same is true for the eastern powers as well. The struggles of the next few decades will be top to bottom, not east to west.
Instead of lying about the outcomes of the green capitalist economy, instead of putting the food of the world into the gas tanks of American SUVs, instead of telling American consumers they can rest easy on organic cotton linens for decades to come, should we not speak the truth? We are going to have to downscale our consumption and our economy drastically, or face a global war over resources, with all the political fallout that portends.
We as citizens can localize our economies, develop more cooperative means of living and using resources, and live more rewarding lives in greater connection to the people around us. We do not need the president or congress to give us permission. Our children are going to live cooperatively in a hundred years whether we like it or not. The choices we make now will determine whether they do so under conditions of peace and freedom, or under an ecofascist boot inciting unending war. The current trend of nationalistic environmentalism, with biofuel as its cutting edge, is leading us very much in the wrong direction.
NOTES
[1] Pimentel, David, Energy and Dollar Costs of Ethanol Production With Corn, M. King Hubbert Center, Petroleum Engineering Department, Colorado School of Mines, Golden CO 80401-1887 at hubbert.mines.edu/news/Pimentel_98-2.pdf
[2] Gardner, Gary, Shrinking Fields, Cropland Loss in a World of Eight Billion, Worldwatch Paper 131, Worldwatch Institute, Washington D.C., 1996, and Brown, Lester, World Watch Institute, The State of the World 1997, A Worldwatch Report on Progress Toward a Sustainable Society, W.W. Norton, New York, 1997
[3] http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/11/06/an-agricultural-crime-against...
[4] http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=a.FB89jDnZzs&refer=h...
[5] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/02/07/cnoil1...
[6] http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2431
[7] Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land-Use Change, Timothy Searchinger, Ralph Heimlich, R. A. Houghton, Fengxia Dong, Amani Elobeid, Jacinto Fabiosa, Simla Tokgoz, Dermot Hayes, and Tun-Hsiang Yu, Science 29 February 2008: 1238-1240. See also Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt, Joseph Fargione, Jason Hill, David Tilman, Stephen Polasky, and Peter Hawthorne, Science 29 February 2008: 1235-1238. Published online 7 February 2008 [DOI: 10.1126/science.1152747] (in Science Express Reports)
[8] http://www.biodiesel.org/news/taxincentive/
[9] http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=29931
[10] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/business/15virgin.html
[11] http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/3551
[12] Hawken, Paul, and Lovins, Amory, and Lovins, Hunter L., Natural Capitalism, Creating the Next Industrial Revolution,Little Brown and Co., Boston, 1999, p.2. See also http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3702
[13] http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSWBT00888720080429
Image by swruler9284, courtesy of Creative Commons license.
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Great article!
I think it is sad that it looks like people are going to fight to maintain their own level of consumption at the price of other peoples lives rather that lowering their consumption.
It seams to me that people think that once they have earnt their money they have a right to spend it anyway they like. If people earn more money by providing a service for others then they cancel out their usefulness through their consumption if they spend all that money on themselves. Conversely, by being poor you are less of a drain on the environment and other people. So essentialy we live in a culture which aspires to consume more and become more of a burden on other people. We need to start viewing material wealth with the same moral outrage as terrorism.
I have to remind myself that just because I have earnt my money and paid my taxes that I don't have the right to spend it any way I like. If spending in an ethical way means having less then so be it. Any excess can be sent to charity.
Excuse me if my comment is rudimentary.
we need to start
viewing material wealth with the same moral outrage as terrorism.
Or maybe as a particularly deadly parasite.
Its about time we got the proper perspective on the wealthy.
Great article.
This article sums up nicely
This article sums up nicely the doubts towards eco consumerism and civilisation in general. Unfortunately, the proposed changes (redesign of whole western society structure) are very unlikely to happen fast enough to stop distaster. No one likes to downgrade. Its actualy another way round - economical pressure is needed for people to change their way of life. Then they can adjust very creatively and surprisingly fast. Sadly, as stated in article the same factor necessary to make people conserve and save resources always brought chaos bringing to power more authoritarian and agressive forces. And on simple level its 'back to basics' with all its problems and 'survival of the fittest' as a leading rule. Ok - it may even work for folks in amazonian forrest but not in concrete deserts most of us live in.
Personaly - the more I know about the current situation the more I am convinced that apocalyptic disasters and wars are inevitable.
The good thing is it doesnt really matter.
Chernobyl is full of wild life now.
Lukasz
Overpopulation
Consumption is one part of the problem,overpopulation another.
Maybe if more women had real freedom,control and choice in their lives......
important perspective
I want to recommend Alexis's book, Culture Change, which goes into this topic in more depth. I think he has an important perspective on the topic.
In order to inspire more people to check out this story, I used StumbleUpon and Digg to spread word of it. If you find it important also, perhaps you can do the same?
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Rational thought in America?
Baby and Bathwater
even so...
hi scottla,
thanks for your comment.
even with this corrective, would you agree that it is not possible to run the type of individualist "survival of the Phattist" culture we have now with any mix of current energies? Do you agree that , even if there are better biofuels, we still require a radical downshift in consumption and de-scaling of economies, which will force cooperative living, which people may prefer ultimately, once they expunge their current mind-parasites and mass-mind delusions?
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Currently almost every
Currently almost every source of energy, if scaled up to
replace fossils brings plenty of other problems. Solar and wind seem to be the most neutral... certainly no biufuels. You talk about decaying wood in forrests - that is also part of the ecosystem that has particular purpose (source of energy for bacterias and insects) and its removal on industrial scale will simply damage the eco system. Also we need to mention about soil erosion and degradation from monocultural use of land. Of course, you can grain different crops every year but that significantly decreases biofuel output per acre.
do the math
Scottla,
If you want to "get to the reality of the matter" as you say, do your research, and do the math. 250 million cars in USA x 10 acres per car = 2.5 billion acres. (Not including trucks, farm equipment, earth moving equipment, trains, ships, etc.)
If you go to cellulosic technologies I believe you'll need even more land per vehicle.
Care to look up the land area of the USA? Ok, I'll do it for you... 2.3 billion acres.
Your analysis fails...
Lots of commas...
Math
math and efficiency
Scott,
Every bit of savings, efficiency, and conservation we can achieve indeed buys us precious time. A few percent more avg mpg, x% less miles driven, increasing recycling efficiency, etc.
The point of Alexis' argument though, is that biofuels aren't really sustainable, at least not at the level of production necessary to keep us in our cars as we are now.
Biofuels are valid as part of some processes, for example, taking some of the cellulose and other unused product at the end of harvest season, and using that to give us some fuel to run a tractor or rototiller for a few days in the spring.
Although there has been some progress in getting the energy return on biofuel above parity, it is still more akin to perpetual motion machines.
Regarding the paper recycling, yes it can improve the efficiency of the system a little, I'm all for it, but it doesn't really solve the basic problem.
concensus
Explosions
Great article and many vaild points.
It seems as though, no matter how ya slice it (the crisis) is and has been mostly a matter of class conflict, social conflict, "getting along" and so forth. Now with the added bonus of the environment, planet, food, energy etc used as weapons or walls.
For the average person or poltico, bio-fuels sound great. But of course, it's all so incredibly shortsighted. However, with many of the new developments in "green" technology (and other things) it's as though we're going through a rapid "growth spurt" or, a Cambrian explosion of forms and evolution - 530 million years ago not everything survived this explosion, not everything "worked". But that explosion of complexity, that increase in things, formed the basis for the diversity of life we see now. Before the Cambrian explosion "most organisms were simple, composed of individual cells occasionally organised into colonies"
Right now, perhaps since the previous 40-100 years most of (consensus) humanity as been just that; "simple...individual cells occasionally organised into colonies."
And recently we are witness to and participants in another explosion of forms.
Of course, this does not eliminate the possibility for damage and/or catastrophe, and there are much better ways to take care of things - but I'm seeing, in small degrees, that even the most desctructive technologies can be re-purposed, remixed, re-envisioned. This takes time, something that may also be in short supply, but it can and is being done in various ways and on various scales.
For example, (and I'm not particularly endorsing this) there is now available a home-ethanol-making kit called the MicroFueler that allows people to make fuel from sugar at home using inedible sugars.
Perhaps not one of those "silver bullets", but it is something that, at the very least, is helping to ween people off oil addiction, turn attention away from mass-consumption and continue the process of radical lifestyle changes. And perhaps this kind of home-DIY-tech, along with myriad advances (explosions) in solar/star technology, communities, social networks and so forth can continue to upgrade and re-envision any imminently primitive technologies and ideologies.
So see we so as seeds we sow. - James Joyce
Alex-is
Hai Alexis!
Greetings my friend,
Glad to see you getting the word out, keeping em straight, but damn that's a long article. Hard to condense the book into an article isn't it?
One point you miss is the contradictory position of industrialized society as the breadbasket of the world. If, in the interests of ecology, you eliminate the unsustainable industrial system of food production in the West, what happens to unsustainable populations in the other parts of the world? (Yes, I know many of those places are unsustainable now because of western influence and corruption, but that is where they are now.)
If every country is made responsible for their own sustainability, many are going to be in the red, both economically and civilly. Haiti, for example, mentioned in your article, is obviously not sustainable.
At this point, the short-term survival of many poor countries depends on them leveraging their mineral wealth in return for access to the production of the West. Many of them are doing this quite effectively now as the dollar weakens.
The heart of your piece is nationalism and how it is leveraging itself via biofuels. You are surprised to see how many "smart people" fail to see the connection between biofuels and nationalism. You describe these people as "foolish." Are they? Has not environmentalism established itself by appealing to our own self-interest? Save our community, our children, our planet, and our future? If using some of our agricultural surplus (actually, there may not be surplus in some commodities these days) helps our country and communities, well, most people won't look at that as foolish. The considerations of people in other countries are secondary to most.
People in some countries may suffer and die. Few countries, first world or third world, are going to change their policy based on that consideration. Right now many of the currently suffering countries around the world are restricting and halting exports to keep their locally produced foods within their own borders. The irony is that these restrictions on the free market may harm people within their own country as well as their neighbors.
Nationalism operates by leveraging the strengths of your own community to keep it strong. Once upon a time that was called survival, but in this age of wealth and surplus it is a sin. But as the age of surplus fades, will the definitions change again?
What is the strength we in the U.S. have to assert? Our food production. What is that production based on? Oil. What is the "ecological" solution? Burn less oil, but then what happens? We produce less food. World hunger goes up. Is the answer that we drive less, and divert more oil to agriculture, and save the world? But as our technologically defined standard of living goes down, more people will go "back to the land." What does that lead to? It means that, instead of working for Mr. Agribusiness, I stay home and grow my own, but "grow my own" food is not going to be exported.
Yes it is possible to "feed and house our citizens with a tenth of the resources that we are currently using in the wealthy nations", but what about the other parts of the world that depend on our surplus? The result is a corresponding tenth of the surplus and trade that sustains other parts of the world.
This is the problem... if you reduce our unsustainable, oil fueled, engineered and fertilized, capitalistic, industrial production, you reduce the the amount of food produced by that system. So your argument basically boils down to, stop the biofuel fiction, and keep burning oil. Improve our efficiency so we can divert some resources to food production, but basically keep the status quo, so we can keep feeding the world. Or else your argument is that the rest of the world needs to survive severe dislocations as they adjust to new systems of production.
Food prices are going up even without biofuels, as food is a product of energy, and energy costs are going up. The biofuel factor is only part of it. In the long run, on the industrial scale, food prices are proportional to energy prices. The only significant effect of energy austerity by the United States would be to temporarily lower oil prices for the rest of the world, enabling them to continue towards the same dead end that we are in.
How does your ideal of cooperative society provide for industrial scale production, processing, shipping, and distribution around the world? It doesn't. Eventually all parts of the world must establish sustainability. Along that path though, lies famine, disease, and war. Nature's solutions to imbalanced resources and populations.
On the field of global power plays, biofuels don't really play into it. While they may have an insidious effect of speeding the demise of hungry and impoverished populations, that doesn't factor into the economic warfare of the global powers of Europe, China, India, Japan, and the United States. The fallout of the global economic situation and oil competition is drastically rising costs for food and energy, biofuel or no biofuel.
Your own analysis establishes that these industrial scale "green" solutions are actually no solution, therefore, the likely outcome is not any kind of "green fascism", but rather, the complete abandonment of these policies.
America feeding the world?
Is it really?
I may be wrong here but what food surplus are you talking about? Corn and Soybeans, amounting for only 1% of US GDP? Majority of US export is in mostly useless 'services' for which need is artificially created?
Or maybe GM monsanto terminator seeds that cunningly make local agricultures dependent on US 'product'. Currently American economy only exploits the world rather than actually helping it.
And please lets not go into export of values and myths (holywood) which amounts to creating demand for american life style in developing countries using marketing tricks.
Or maybe you meant exporting democratic values? Goes really well in Iraq and Afganistan...
So I'll ask again - what surplus is America, the biggest importer of goods in the world is currently giving to the world?
Cellulose will not help....
Thanks for commenting on my article
To address some of the issues raised in the comments:
People often call me Alex. Not sure why.... No offense taken.
Regarding population growth, most human cultures throughout most of history have strictly limited their populations. Rapid growth is an intentional undertaking of imperial societies. One of the most effective antidotes, as pointed out, is improving the position of women in society.
As for non-food biofuels and cellulose, a few quick points. The entire early phase of the industrial revolution was fueled on cellulose. As a result, Europe was deforested by the mid 1600s, the U.S. by the mid 1800s. Our old growth forests went into the boilers for the most part, not into lumber. And that was when both population and resource consumption per person were much lower.
In the 1970s when the Limits to Growth was first published by The Club Of Rome (Donella Meadows et al), they ran their world model with different energy inputs. They found that a full doubling of all of the world's resources added less than two decades onto industrial growth. That is because of the geometric nature of the curve.
I ask my audiences when I speak, what if cellulosic ethanol is a miracle, and gas prices fall to a dollar a gallon? Then the building, the growth and consumption continues. Adding energy does not make the planet larger. If we remove one limit (energy), we only find ourselves colliding with other limits.
President Bush, environmental radical that he is, has pointed out that oil is an addiction. So if your friend was addicted to heroin, you would help them out by finding a new source? There is no such thing as "waste" cellulose. The cellulose that exists in forest and fields feeds the soil and thus feeds us. You take it away at a price.
You can make trash into energy, but rest assured, that stream of trash will dry up as the oil belt tightens. There is no free lunch.
The bottom line is that we live on a finite planet. I am not opposed to biofuel. It is simply irrelevant to the problem of growth in a finite system. It's a shell game at that level. A truly sustainable society could use fossil fuel sustainably. It is not about the fuel source. One hundred years from now, all energy will be biofuel based. But if we try to power a growing, consumeristic industrial economy with biofuel, then our grandchildren are going to live in very degraded conditions.
As for "inedible sugars," you got me on that one. I don't think it is a significant energy source.
As for Matt's comments about de-industrialization, I think you have misunderstood both my position about trade and production as well as the position of the U.S. in the global agricultural economy.
The U.S. imports nearly as much food as we export. We are the largest importer of food on the planet. We export bulk grain (cheap, historically at least) and import expensive animals foods and fresh foods. We have suppressed agricultural capacity all over the world to serve as a dumping ground for our cheap grains. This year, a lot of that suppressed capacity will come back "on line." It will be interesting to see the results.
I am not suggesting strict local self-sufficiency. That would be idiotic. I am suggesting local empowerment. Trade between empowered partners is a very different business. I do not know how many nations in the world will not be able to feed themselves once they rebuild their own productive capacity. That is a fragile position for them to be in. But the idea that the U.S. is the breadbasket of the world and that we have to keep feeding everybody is just plain wrong. We have played the cards to make money, not to feed people.
As for local self sufficiency, humans have always traded. That's a good thing, not a bad thing. The problem is a gross inequality and all the suppression that comes with it, both of social awareness and productive capacity. Trade is both economically and ecologically beneficial when carried on between empowered parties.
I am also in no way opposed to technology. We need to choose our technology, not have it chosen for us by those in power who only want to increase their power. The bright future is one of connected villages, choosing what technologies improve their lives on a sustainable basis, not isolationism.
Take care, Alexis Zeigler
Population
Hi Alexis,
Great stuff.
All of this is interesting, but doesn't all of this devolve to a discussion of population growth? In 1930, the "finite system" carried 2 billion humans. Today, we're approaching 7 billion. That's more than three times the human demand on the planet in less than a century. Since oil was discovered in truly global commercial quantities in the early 1900s, one might speculate that the boost in energy somehow enabled the boost in population. Regardless, it's the same planet, but a helk of a lot more of us. You cite deforestation, etc. by the 1800s; even if we all individually used 1/6th the resources we currently use, we'd still be placing a higher aggregate toll on the planet than humanity did in the 1800s. Making the system more efficient is the only alternative. Unless, of course, genecide is on the list of policy options...
Genocide?
Of course genocide is wrong... we cannot do that
How about just exploiting and starving world to death?
Invisible hand of free market economy is neutral and not evil like genocide.
Or maybe fueling conflicts and dictatorships around the world for multinational profit instead?
Also evil, but common imperialist practice (US, China, Russia, partly Europe too) and cannot be easily called genocide. However - example of Darfur shows that its not something one can get away with easily anymore...
what about weather
'biofuels or global warming' - false choice
thats a false and very limited choice.
It seems answer to global energy crisis is not solar, wind or hydrogen megawatts or miles.
The real answer is 'nega-watts' and 'nega-miles' - saving and conservation of resources through redesign of society and economic models. The problem is that saving is against current 'constant growth', consumption based model of economy, which benefits the rulers of the world and governments.
So they try to reinforce such false choices (biofuels or global warning) to stop people getting to real source of problems and divide the alternative community.
Population on the limited sphere
Scottla,
Population has indeed grown while the Earth has not. Some people think we are already in "overshoot," meaning we cannot sustain current populations as oil declines. (An interesting analysis of footprints and carrying capacity can be found at: Wackernagel, Mathis, et al, Tracking the Ecological Overshoot of the Human Economy, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 99, no. 14, 9 July 2002, p. 9, 266-271)
One of the most sobering facts I have come across is that humans are now fixing more nitrogen than plants are on a global scale. What that means for post-oil agriculture is hard to know. (Nitrogen is fixed using natural gas. Fertilizer plants are moving to the middle east as North America has peaked in gas production.)
Even if our current population is unsustainable and undergoes contraction, then the problems of political polarization, the suppression of social awareness, and unsustainability will remain.
Regarding genocide, I have used that term in past articles, though my editors tell me the word is not technically accurate because there is no specific ethnic target in this case. I still think it is the most accurate word for what is beginning and will continue. As visualchemy points out, it will be the sanitized genocide of the market.
Regarding cjmoore's comment about drought, if you are referring to the impact on food prices, drought in Australia and elsewhere did tighten the food market. But the runaway prices we see now in grain trading are clearly a result of the unpredicted, unplanned biofuel hemorrhage. The market would have gone up some with drought and increased meat consumption in the far east, but nothing like what we are seeing. By the way, my website and book can be found at conev.org
take care, Alexis
apparently
Solar
I'll add one other thing that's been on my mind in this string of posts: our system is not finite or closed. We live in an infinite universe whose hallmark is abundance. We just have to see it.
In the case of energy, solar is a great example. While we may not have the technologies to efficiently harness solar for all mankind, it's coming.
In one sense, most all alternative energy is solar (save, perhaps, for geo-thermal). Biofuels create energy by sequestering sunlight inside of plant material; oil is sequestered sunlight in the same manner, just time shifted by millions of years. Coal is plant material -- more stored sunlight. Wind power? Air motion is caused by heating on the surface of the earth: more sun.
The sun, being external to our planet, provides a constant flow of energy. And there is enough. Let's go get it!
CSP + HVDC
I just came back from UKaware show - thought it would be a kind of eco consumerist event, but was surprised with certain consent about importance of buying less and things like changing diet as a big contribution against GW.
The most important thing for me was finding out about efficiency of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), high voltage direct current (HVDC) lines and systems that will create the grid connecting Europe with Northern Africa ( www.desertec.org ) - all these brought some hope to my heart.
Star Power
Hi Alexis
Yes, I'm not too sure about inedible sugars and the viability of that technology. But it seems to represent a small "remix". And it need not be used in isolation - it could be a community service (they do cost $10 000) and perhaps it need not be sugar, maybe it could be further "hacked" and something else used. Here's more info on the MicroFueler.
In any event, it seems to me that solar energy is the only way. After all, that would mean we are powered by a STAR! ;)
Ancient cultures worshipped the Sun, but could not(?) really harness its energy. We are on the cusp of harnessing, or working with, the Sun - and when that really takes hold, we will return to, or blossom in, our worshipping of this Star and our relationship to the Earth and Cosmos.
Conservation is key - what about meat?
I agree with much of your conclusions in your article but I don’t understand your focus on biofuels. I agree that resources are finite and that we are seeing competition for them which is one of the reasons sustainability is so interlinked with global justice.
I also agree that conservation is the key. There will not be an easy technological fix to our problems. There is no alternative fuel that we can drop in to replace oil without changing our lifestyles. Even if we could find a clean source of energy with no side effects the result would be humans with unlimited access to energy and it seems unlikely we would use that power for good. More likely is that we would continue to destroy the ecosystems that support us – only faster than before.
At Dancing Rabbit (www.dancingrabbit.org) we use biodiesel. Ideally we would be running our vehicles on wind or solar power or at least on waste veggie oil (WVO) or BioD made from WVO. Unfortunately, we mostly buy BioD from new oil. We recognize that the improvements of this, if any, over running on petro are minimal.
While everyone wants to talk to us about BioD, the real difference we make at DR is that we have 3 cars for 40 people and drive less than 10% of what the average American drives (among the many eco things we do). That, more than our choice of fuel, is the key to being more sustainable.
As for the global food crisis, I imagine that biofuels are one of the causes (see source) but rising oil prices are also a factor. Given that food is now produced using so much petro energy (10 units of petro energy per 1 unit of food energy, they say) its not surprising that with oil at $125/barrel we see food prices go up. But what about the question of meat?
“More than half the U.S. grain and nearly 40 percent of world grain is being fed to livestock rather than being consumed directly by humans” (source). This is more than 8 times what you cite as going into biofuels. Can we not assume that if every acre of biofuel causes an acre of rainforest to be put into production for food, that the same is true for every acre of grain that goes to livestock?
I’m not saying we all have to be vegan, I imagine that some meat can be produced efficiently without reducing available food supplies. Integrated permacultural techniques claim to do this.
But where is the outcry in the mainstream media about the effect of meat on the current food crisis? Biofuel takes the hit because meat is old news and biofuel has the delicious irony of an attempted ecological improvement that has drawbacks.
Claims of meat eating having a bigger impact than car use are hotly debated but one can certainly conclude that both are significant greenhouse impacts. Again, consuming less is the key.
There is some hope for biofuels in cellulosic ethanol, but even here the governments optimistic projection is that we could meet 30% of our current fuel needs with ethanol without displacing food crops (source). I worry that such a plan would create a huge impact on habitat despite their assurances that the study excludes “environmentally sensitive areas”. Even if you include fuel from waste vegetable oil there is no way that we won’t have to cut our use drastically.
So like you say, conservation, cooperation, localization, justice…we can do it, but we will have to make a change. No one else will make it for us.
Meat and Biofuel
TonyRabbit,
thanks for commenting on my article. I agree with what you are saying. Clearly, you are a dedicated environmental activist willing to undertake significant changes in how you live. My hat is off to you.
I live in a moderately sized city. Here I can watch the commuter cars going by with variations of "biofuel" on the personalized plates and bumper stickers, SUVs and all.
One of the local liberal politicians recently held a biofuels forum. The local car dealership parked a big shiny SUV in front and put an "Ethanol Powered!" sign on it. (I papered the place with some contrarian pamphlets, but that's another story...) While you see biofuel in the context of conservation and significant lifestyle changes, most of America sees biofuel in the context of business as usual. It would be nice if more of those folks got the message.
As for meat, I have been a vegetarian for over 20 years and a vegan for over 10. People hate it when you try to tell them what to eat, but the issue is huge. A recent UN FAO study estimated that the modern agricultural system contributes more to global warming (in part due to both methane and nitrogen oxides) than all of the transportation sector.
I agree that biofuels are getting attention because they are the new, sexy issue. But there is another reason as well. As much as agribusiness would like to stuff us full of pork chops and ice cream, and thereby dispose of their historic grain surpluses through highly profitable conversions of that grain to animal foods, the truth is that we can only eat so much. Escalating meat consumption in the far east is a big contributor to the current food crisis. Having said that, cars are insatiable compared to humans, and the current speed with which biofuel is being expanded represents a faster acceleration of consumption than even the most obese among us could manage in food consumption. The bodies of rich people can only digest so much fat, whereas the appetites of their machines is insatiable.
As you said, "resources are finite and that we are seeing competition for them which is one of the reasons sustainability is so interlinked with global justice.... I also agree that conservation is the key."
That is the heart of the matter.
take care alexis
Another great article
This site continues to impress. It is heartening beyond my ability to tell to see a community of people who are really looking at these issues and thinking deeply about the state of the world as we know it.
Even more heartening that so many are, rather than focusing entirely on what we are doing wrong, also bringing possible *solutions* to the table. It is easy to criticize; but hard to create. The comments -- and, to me, the fact that the original author reads the comments and answers questions/criticisms, allowing it to turn into a true discussion -- even more make me happy I have found this place.
I have been watching the unfolding of exactly what you are talking about here, Alexis, and have had my mind boggled and my heart nearly broken. Being an environmentalist for most of my life, watching the movement become hijacked by big business was very painful.
I wanted to believe that it was good, at first, but they have simply waved their hands in front of everyone's eyes with pseudo-solutions that do nothing to actually fix the problems in any sort of long-term fashion. Once again, worried about whether or not they can afford that fifth Ferrari, the powers-that-be have taken the most short-sighted path available to them.
Some evidence I've seen suggests that every planet in the solar system is showing signs of "global warming" -- shrinking poles and changing weather patterns -- which, if true, means that the carbon element (pun intended =) ) is less of a factor than we thought (not that it helps, either). I imagine they jumped the bandwagon as soon as they saw that it was inevitable, and are now trying to make sure they can profit from it.
Keep up the talking, guys; and the doing even more so. And thanks for helping me stay sane in the face of the world in which we live.
"You must *be* the change you wish to see in the world." Mahatma Gandhi
I Don't (Completely) Agree
Your article suffers from a paradigm that you have not completely thought out. And since you want to be reality based, you should develop it further.
First, your constant use of biofuels as the prime example of “environmental nationalism” ignores the fact that many Western governments are now questioning their use for the very reason you are alarmed about: food vs. fuel. My own state’s VERY conservative Republican Senator has said it has gone too far for this reason. You also ignore second-generation biofuels that come from non-food sources. I concede that these are not commercial yet, but their potential dilutes your arguments. At the least, I think you should find a better example.
Also, you completely discount the fact that some technologies of “environmental nationalism,” such as wind power, actually WORK to some degree. Even in an idyllic society, there may be a need for them. You also ignore the huge amount of resources currently embodied in the existing, albeit wasteful, infrastructure. If things devolve as badly as you suggest they will, should we just let all these buildings and roads rot? Shouldn’t we at least recycle or reuse them, on the ground or as materials?
Glad We are Trying to Fix It
Paul,
It is a good thing that many people, including many conservatives are questioning food-based biofuels. Perhaps we can pull back from the brink of the current crisis that was manufactured simply from poor judgement.
That will not solve the bigger problem of growth on a finite Earth. I see the most important part of my work to draw connections between ecological stressors (which are increasingly recognized by many conservatives) and the potential political impacts. There is, in my judgement, a sore lack of such thinking in mainstream circles.
Non-food biofuel may buy us a little time, but not much, and it will not really solve anything. The Earth is finite, the current economic system demands open-ended growth. New energy sources, of ANY kind, will only accelerate the ecological impact of our society and the long-term political reckoning if they are simply overlaid on the consumer society.
I hope wind, solar, and the re-use of our current infrastructure plays a large role in our future. But we have to understand that it will be a very different future, one in which we must embrace an entirely different definition of sustainability than that which dominates now.
I have built all manner of solar electric and solar hot water systems, composters, super-insulated houses. I have built houses largely from reclaimed and recycled materials. These technologies can be great if they are applied intelligently. But the dominant idea is that we can continue economic growth, the individualized, Imperial, society with alternative technology. That is a terrible delusion that needs desparately to be corrected.
My point is not that ecofacism is inevitable, but that it is likely if we do not change course. I would hope to do my part to influence that change by pointing to what will happen if we continue the current course. Take care, Alexis
Exodus?
Hardt and Negri in Multitude propose the vaguely defined plan of exodus as a solution to global Empire. While I think they intend this broadly as a proposal of an exodus of subjectivities, allegiances, and activities connected to capital Empire (and I agree with this broad conception of the plan), I wonder if we have not reached the time when all those with the means to do so should actually undertake a physical exodus from spaces where our actions are inherently and irredeemably controlled by the demands of Empire (as I am preparing to do from New York, perhaps the locus of all control). There is fertile ground for revolutionary cooperative society-building in a diverse range of low-population areas all over the world (travel around and you'll find them), and these seem likely to yield better results than trying to grow new societies in the cracks in the concrete of Empire.
Let Empire fall: yes, many will die (and are dying, and have died) in its final throes, but is not true freedom the most important goal, and the foundation from which to build everything else? I don't suppose many are willing to entertain a plan as dramatic as physical exodus, but perhaps historical forces will continue to conspire to make this radical solution more and more attractive.
We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a feather-bed. -Thomas Jefferson