"The historical cheapness of corn has driven it into nearly every aspect of our economy, in the form, most familiarly, of corn syrup. The low price of corn over the past half-century lies at the very foundation of America’s historically (and unrealistically) low food prices.

Gratifying our two major appetites — cheap food and cheap gas — used to seem easy because both corn and oil were abundant. Cheap oil helped keep corn prices low because it cost farmers less to run their tractors and combines.

But we are entering a new dynamic now. While there has been talk recently about refining ethanol from sources other than corn, that could take a while. So at the moment what we are trying to do is gratify those appetites from the same resource: agricultural land. No matter how high prices go, what will need to change isn’t the amount of corn acreage available or even the size of the enormous harvests we are already getting.

What will need to change is the size of our appetites. "

-from The Price of Corn, via the nytimes.

this comes a few days after (and obviously with a subtle tip of the hat to) the UN "Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" - the summary PDF of which, can be downloaded here - which somewhat resolutely concludes that yes, we are indeed causing global warming (via the green house effect). although the majority of left-leaning thinkers would already agree, in many ways this report comes as long-needed neighborhood-bully-on-our-side who can finally coerce the lesser (yet stronger than us) bullys, who have consistantly denied it for their own benefit. typically, the latter thinkers are either involved with money, oil or both.

a nice side note on sustainability; to acheive and maintain a development regime that is sustainable, we do not have to live differently (ie, in strange, post modern concrete dwellings, half submerged for energy and water concervation purposes, in a desert scene not unlike lukes house with unkle owen on tattooine), but instead, we must think differently about how we live.

cars and suburbia are the iconic nemesis of sustainability, and are the anti-thesis of my thesis - however, it is possible to create a car that solves its two biggest problems (its non-reclaimable design and its energy needs) thereby enacting the prior statement; we can drive cars IF we rethink them, and create them differently. we CAN be consumerists, if we rethink how and what we consume, for what reasons, and what happens to the old stuff when we are "done" with it. most aspects of our lives can cantinue, but just in modified and different ways.

sustainable development will arrive when every aspect of our existence has been reevaluated and redesigned to be appropriate.