A newspaper writer addressing offshore drilling recently said, very matter-of-factly, that no rational person could seriously suggest cutting back on energy use, because that would send civilization back to the Stone Age. I’ve been seriously advocating cutting back on energy use for about four decades now, and most of the time, I’m quite rational.

My argument goes like this: About 70% of our energy is used for transportation. How much of that could be eliminated without even getting close to going back to the Stone Age?

One advantage of getting old is that in scenarios like this I can compare today with when I was a kid, 60 years ago. We didn’t have a car.  We had bicycles, but my dad usually walked to work and we walked to school, church, shopping, and visiting relatives. On rare occasions we rode the bus to a nearby town, took the train on longer trips, and in an emergency, there were taxis.

We lived in a small town, but city life was similar. And my country cousins were also able to walk to school, church, and the country store.

Today my kids, their spouses, and their kids all have personal, individual cars. And I honestly don’t think they’re any better off than we were.

So, is the writer cited above talking about an honest-to-goodness primitive Stone Age, or is he just using that as a metaphor for retreating a bit from a civilization that produces (and uses) 1,000 barrels of oil every second of every day? If my childhood was what you want to call the Stone Age, I say, “Bring it on!”

Sure, everything was different then. For one thing, it was possible to walk almost anywhere. But instead of saying it’s impossible to reduce energy use without going primitive, wouldn’t it be more rational to consider making it possible to walk again? After all, we got into this mess only because the automobile made it possible!

If you think this is outrageous, check this out: Some people are actually choosing their homes on the basis of “walking scores.” Web sites such as www.walkscore.com allow you to type in an address in any of 2,500 neighborhoods in the 40 largest U.S. cities and get a rating based on the distance of certain amenities such as shopping. This doesn’t help rural-dwelling homesteaders, but then, we are supposedly more self-sufficient and eco-conscious than the average urbanite anyway. Interestingly, our rural area has seen a recent resurgence in those old-time country crossroads stores, mostly Mennonite. As it is, we often go a week or more without even opening the car door.

And of course, we’re vastly outnumbered by city people, who use most of the petroleum and therefore could account for saving most of it.

Fewer cars and miles traveled would also mean less need for new roads and maintenance, traffic lights and cops. There would be less smog and fewer traffic accidents. We’d spend less on insurance, tires, and batteries.

This is just personal transportation. We haven’t even mentioned transporting goods, especially food, which is the focus of locavores. And what about lawns… and energy slaves…

But oops, I see another argument coming: All that would raise havoc with our capitalist economic system (which is no more pure capitalism than our government is pure democracy), and that would certainly — you guessed it — send us back to the Stone Age!

On second thought, maybe that’s not such a bad idea. Then we could start over again, on a more sustainable — and rational — basis. — Jd Belanger

Farm workers have issued a challenge to the 15 million or more unemployed Americans: Come on, take our jobs!

The effort is tongue-in-cheek and its real purpose is immigration reform, but it made me think about something else.

If you’ve been following my scribblings you’re aware that I’ve been suggesting that many unemployed people could make productive use of their enforced idleness by doing what many employed people dream of, but are too busy to accomplish: homesteading. At the very least, they could grow some of their own food. And you’re also aware that I have been saying (for years) that most Americans have no idea where their food comes from — and that it’s highly subsidized, which is one of the reasons growing your own isn’t always cheaper than store-bought stuff. But this farm workers’ campaign combines all that and more in a neat package, and ties it with a bow.

The U.S. Dept. of Labor says three out of four farm workers were not born in this country, and more than half are here illegally. A small part of this complex issue involves the concern that illegal aliens are working, while American citizens are not. So the United Farm Workers are saying, “come on, take our jobs!” not because they expect very many takers, but because the lack of enthusiasm for that back-breaking kind of labor will spotlight the need for immigrant workers.

I have had some experience with this. The first time in my life I ever made more than $100 a week was as a migrant laborer. That was in 1953, when $100 was big money. The catch: the pay was 90¢ an hour. (Side note: That was a decent wage. I worked many jobs for 75¢ an hour, even years later.) That means an average 14-15 hour workday, although I vividly recall one sweltering June morning when we started at 6 a.m as usual, worked straight through to 2 a.m. the next day, and went back to work at 6 again.

And I was 15 years old. Even then, nobody wanted to work like that, so the 16-year age limit was lowered to help save the crop.

This was in a Wisconsin pea cannery, in the days before peas were combined in the field. Truckloads of pea vines were dumped and forked into the viner by hand. The shelled peas spilled into wooden boxes, while the vines piled up in huge stinking stacks. My job was to remove and stack each box as it was filled, replacing it with an empty. The guys forking the vines into the shelling machine worked a lot harder than I did.

A few years later, I found myself in California, nearly broke and with nothing to do. So I signed on to pick green beans, by hand. We were paid by the pound.

Little kids picked more than I did, and made more money. (They also spoke much better Spanish.) A buddy and I combined a day’s wages to buy a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter, which is all we had to live on. Shortly after that I enlisted in the Marine Corps, where the pay was $90 a month, but at least we got to eat. (A few years later I was back with the migrants, but that time to interview César Chávez, founder of the United Farm Workers, for a magazine article.)

Based on those experiences alone, I don’t foresee many average American citizens rushing to become farm laborers, even when their unemployment checks run out. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t really expect very many to become homesteaders, either. We as a nation have become too soft to do much actual physical labor, too dependent to scratch for ourselves, and too mentally lazy to figure it all out.

So the long spiraling vortex down the tube continues, with apparently nobody seeing the tangled webs and connections, much less able to deal with them. I certainly don’t have any answers — aside from homesteading, which is only slightly more popular than picking beans for The Man in triple digit temperatures.

When it all hits the bottom, that’s when things will change. Seems like that time is getting closer and closer.

Note: If you’re looking for work, fill out the online form under the banner “I want to be a farm worker” at www.takeourjobs.org

Perhaps you missed it, but “superweeds” — unloved plants that thumb their noses at herbicides such as Roundup — were in the news last week. Of course, if you’ve been reading magazines such as Countryside for the past 30-40 years, it’s not news at all that weeds have adapted to plant-killers, requiring more and stronger chemicals in what becomes a never-ending spiral.

Most people missed the story because it wasn’t very widely reported: it wasn’t news because most people don’t care. Very few have any inkling of how this affects them, why it’s important, or even what it all means. They know very little about organic farming because they know very little about where their food comes from.

There is neither time nor space here to provide the background for anyone who has stumbled onto this site accidentally and lacks even a basic understanding of organic farming. But to at least try to provide a frame of reference, let’s just say that organic farmers don’t use synthetic biocides for many reasons, all of which funnel down to their effects on the biosphere, the Living Earth, which includes us. An herbicide — the plant-killer branch of the pesticide family — doesn’t only kill weeds. It kills other plants as well, of course, but through the webs of ecology it can also kill insects and other animals that depend on those plants for food or habitat. This in turn affects higher forms of life that depend on those creatures for sustenance. None of this takes into account the potential deleterious side effects of the chemicals on soil, water, and humans. This doesn’t begin to cover the subject, but it’s enough to get us to the next step.

Herbicides have been used since ancient times: conquering armies spread salt on the land to inhibit food production, thus starving their enemies. Salt has historically been used to control weeds in salt-tolerant crops such as asparagus. But it wasn’t until after World War II, when “better living through chemistry” arrived and the chemical factories of the war machine lay idle, that chemical pesticides and fertilizers transformed agri-culture into industrial agri-business.

Monsanto had been a leading chemical company since 1901, but not until 1945 did it start producing and marketing agricultural chemicals, including 2,4D. In 1960, an Agricultural Division was established. Today, Monsanto is strictly an agribusiness, the largest seed company in the world, and famous for such controversial products as bovine somatotropin (Bst) and herbicides including Ramrod, Lasso, and Roundup. These are based on glyphosate, which Monsanto patented in the 1970s, and which became a cash cow for the company. When the patent ran out in 2000, cheaper products from China flooded the market, and glyphosate use proliferated even more.

Roundup was first sold in 1976. Then there was Roundup D-PAK. Then Roundup Ultra. Then Roundup UltraMAX. Each one was “new and improved.” But a more insidious development was “Roundup Ready” seeds. Through bioengineering, planted crops can resist the deadly effects of the herbicide, making its use even more widespread. Today, 80% of the corn and 90% of the soybeans grown in the U.S. come from Roundup Ready seeds (which of course come only from Monsanto). But if scientists can develop seeds immune to toxic chemicals, so can nature.

We already have the makings of a marvelously complex and intriguing bedtime story for anyone just starting to get involved in organic farming, but this is only the beginning.

For example, while organic farmers shun herbicides in general, if only on principle, glyphosate (and Roundup) have found some support. The chief scientist for a nonprofit organic advocacy group, the Organic Center, recently said, “If glyphosate isn’t the safest herbicide, it comes damn close.” Jeff Gilman, an associate professor of horticulture at the University of Minnesota, takes a very balanced and open-minded but scientific approach to all aspects of gardening. In The Truth About Organic Gardening, he discusses the pros and cons of glyphosate, concluding that properly used, it does have its place. He says “We aren’t surprised if a flame from a flamethrower, a common organic method of weed control, kills frogs, so why are we surprised that a heavy dose of Roundup does?” (Like many in the organic community, he’s bothered less by glyphosate than by the other ingredients in Roundup.)

The story would also involve such interesting twists as the 1996 lawsuit accusing Monsanto of false and misleading advertising by claiming that its glyphosate-based herbicides were “safer than table salt.” There were also accusations — and convictions — involving scientific fraud.

Early on, some scientists and many organic farmers were concerned about herbicide resistance to glyphosate. Monsanto, naturally, dismissed such concerns. Now they can’t, because farmers across the country are finding weeds that are unaffected by the herbicide. At least nine species are known to be immune, affecting millions of acres in more than 20 Midwestern and Southern states. And the other chemical companies are taking notice.

Now, here’s what should be the real news in this story: What has this taught us?

Don’t be silly. We haven’t learned a doggone thing. Here’s how the agribusiness industry is facing this challenge:

The other ag chemical companies see Monsanto’s trouble as an opportunity to revive the older, even more dangerous herbicides that Roundup displaced, including 2,4-D and dicamba. What’s much, much worse, they’re taking a page from Monsanto’s book and developing bioengineered seeds to match their own brands of herbicides. According to The Wall Street Journal, Dow Chemical Co., DuPont Co., Bayer AG, BASF SE and Syngenta AG are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to develop genetically modified (GM, or “Frankenstein”) soybean, corn and cotton seeds that can survive a dousing by their house-brand herbicides.

Have they lost their minds? Can’t any halfway intelligent individual see the handwriting on the wall?

Obviously not. Said Dan Dyer, head of soybean research and development at Syngenta: “The herbicide business used to be good before Roundup nearly wiped it out. Now it is getting fun again.”

Fun. As I said last week, the really terrifying thing is that some people actually like what the world is becoming. —Jd Belanger

Note: There will be no blog here next Friday. See you in two weeks.