Getting to Green

Last week I wrote about a table of figures I find highly interesting, and earlier this week I found a way to publish the table itself. At first glance, the numbers bring into question the almost universally supposed efficiency of modern agricultural practices and -- especially for those of us with active imaginations -- perhaps the supposed efficiency of modern industrial methods in general.

Due to technical difficulties beyond my control, my previous post about a table of energy inputs and outputs for various forms of food production contained description and discussion, but not the table itself. If you're reading this, those difficulties have been resolved.

. . . is small and visually unimpressive. At the moment, it's in my living room. On an end table beside my favorite chair. It's table 3.1 in Chapter 3 of Ecological Economics: An Introduction by Michael Common and Sigrid Stagl. (It's written as a college-level textbook. Greenback's library didn't have it, but the Backboro public library did. Go figure.)

Yesterday, I posed (and pointed to an answer for) the question I've used to stop many an economist dead in his/her tracks. But I shouldn't pick on economists (at least not on this count). Most people in most professional concentrations are readily stymied if asked to justify or explain what they do in terms of first principles. Sustainability folk are no different. Ask "what's sustainability for?" or some variant thereon. Then prepare to ignore a certain amount of stammering and nervous weight-shifting.

When students arrive on campus (as they are currently), it's impossible to know where each is eventually headed. Some will go into the arts (although most won't). Some will go into politics (ditto). Many will to into business or the professions, although more won't. But the one thing of which we can be sure is that each student -- whether (s)he graduates or not, regardless of major or degree -- will become part of the economy.

Over the weekend, my watch strap broke. So on Monday, on the way home from campus, I went to the store to get a replacement. More precisely, I went to the stores.

OK, this is just a little thing. But sometimes, good thinks come in small packages.

It made the news here, but not for long -- ten percent of the world's population lost electric power in a single event.