An Infinite Supply of Finite Resources period. Instead, we degrade existing soils and exhaust fossil water to
produce so-called renewable corn biofuel while exporting finite reserves
of crude oil. In December 0 , Congress repealed a forty-year ban on
exporting crude oil to other countries. By 0 7 , the United States was
exporting . million barrels of oil a day.
America’s track record of recognizing and then stewarding finite
resources has not been good. Rather than confront reality, our modus
operandi for overcoming scarcity in one resource is to cannibalize an-
other finite resource. Hydrofracking for oil and natural gas is a current
example. The method requires immense quantities of water.^ While
some water can be recycled, its toxicity to land, along with the absence
of any guarantee that underground water will not be contaminated,
is pushed aside. Proposals to desalinize ocean water provide a further
example of the narrowness of our thinking. The desalinization process
itself is known to be highly energy-intensive, and that’s without even
considering the matter of how to transport water inland to where fertile
soil is located.
Land to grow food is in a precarious state. The warnings from Wash-
ington and Jefferson of ruinous land practices have gone unheeded.
Relying on fossil energy to compensate for soil nutrients has pushed
more food production onto marginal lands, allowing an estimated one-
half of soil loss to go unnoticed.
Belief in an unlimited supply of finite resources is the second driving
force behind the modern food system. The .7 million miles of roads,
enough to wrap around the world 0 times, gave unbridled access to
farmland.^ The . million miles of rivers and 7 ,000 large dams (“large”
meaning six feet or higher) provided plenty of water.^ And the network
of . million miles of petroleum, gas transmission, and distribution
pipelines assured on-demand availability of liquid energy.^ We have
built an infrastructure and a lifestyle that presume that finite resources
are always infinitely available.
Not long ago, ExxonMobil ran an ad campaign under the banner
“Energy Lives Here.” In a series of television commercials, viewers saw
just how much finite energy was part of everyday life. One commercial
traced natural gas from the drilling rig to an egg being boiled in the