Sorry for not posting in a while. This blogging isn't as easy as I thought it might be.

Oil Infiltration

I was walking through my local Target store the other day thinking about our dependency on oil as I seem to do quite often these days and began looking around to see just how many items are directly manufactured from oil. Here is a list though by no means a complete one. If you have other ideas please reply.

1. Anything made from plastic (How big is that category?!!)

2. Cosmetics

3. Many pharmaceuticals

4. Fertilizers (It literally grows the food we eat)

5. Cleaning products

6. Most synthetic fibers (Clothing)

7. Paints, dyes & ink (So if it has color thank oil)

Then I got to thinking, which is always bad, about how many items we use are indirectly related to oil. The first that came to mind naturally was gasoline. Though its not sold at Target I used it to power my car to get there.

Of course I found some things not made from oil but more indirectly related. I happened to be looking at microwave popcorn (I've found that Orville Redenbacher's 'Corn on the Cob' style by far is the best). OK, so its not made from oil but how did it come to be and be here for me to look at?

Well, the fields were cleared & tilled by machinery powered by oil, the seeds were planted using oil driven tractors, the crops were tended by the same tractors, the plants were treated with pesticides and fertilizers both made from petroleum derivatives, the pesticides were sprayed from aircraft powered by aviation fuel, the corn was harvested by a combine powered by fuel, the corn was driven to market in a truck, the corn was packed in plastic, driven to another plant packed in its signature red box, then driven again to a Target distribution center, It's probably on a large pallet which was moved by a forklift (maybe electric powered by most likely gas powered), loaded onto another truck and transported to my Target store.

Now keep in mind that for each sub -process of this popcorn production how large a part oil plays. The construction of the tractors, combines, aircraft & trucks, the machinery at the processing plants and the actual plant buildings. You can keep taking each step back further and further too:

For instance; is there wood in the plant? Yes, for pallets and other items for sure. How did the wood come to be there? It's harvested by a gas powered chainsaw, then put onto a truck using a fuel powered lift, moved via truck to a sawmill that had how much oil used in its construction?....and so on and so on. The list becomes endless.

What I suppose I'm trying to say in a rather wordy manner that incidentally gives you a little insight of what it's like to be me (scary ain't it?) is that oil is a part of us. It has ingratiated itself into every aspect of our lives & society. We are utterly and completely dependent on it and not only dependent on it but we depend on it being plentiful and cheap.

Without oil the store would be empty, well to be technical the store would not exist in the first place. But should oil become scarce and expensive the store shelves would be bare. What would you do then? What will we all do then? This isn't a hypothetical problem. We WILL face this problem perhaps soon than we expect. T. Boone Pickens, perhaps the world's best known oilman, said, "I think we peaked globally last year in production." meaning 2007.

Like the little black & white cartoon link at the bottom of this blog says; "How Will You Ride the Slide?" I've got some thoughts on that too. Maybe for my next post I'll get into them.

Please let me know if you think I'm wrong. I so dearly WANT to be wrong!