Alcohol Is Not Food

Okay, beer was once food. But as a general rule, it's safe to say that alcohol is not food. Yet we're willing to convert food calories to alcohol calories and then burn them in our cars rather than eat them. It's things like this that make me understand why Gaia is thinking about thinning the human herd.
Famine is one of those things on my mind these days. The UN is warning of food shortages and a crisis in distribution, prices are rising steadily as big money is finding big profits in speculating on food futures markets, and global warming is devastating worldwide production. But we still don't see the linkages between the diverse issues facing us--which, I have to say, leaves me batting my head against a wall. We love the "traditional" western diet, but it takes 700 food calories to produce 100 calories of animal protein. And that doesn't include the calories expended to produce the initial 700 calories. This is the same problem we're facing in fossil fuel production; eventually it takes more energy to produce a barrel of oil than a barrel of oil contains (the Alberta tar sands is approaching this already). That is simply unsustainable, whether it's food or oil--and particularly when it's food AND oil.