Quote:
Originally Posted by secondcurve
One point I would add is that it is easy to blame "our leaders". However, most Americans have grown accustomed to having unlimited supplies of cheap energy at their disposal. Look in the mirror and it is likely you will see the real culprit. Our society has grown fat, dumb and lazy and $125.00 a barrel oil may just be the wake up call needed do something about our energy dependence.
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Agreed! The first time I ever heard this warning against becoming "fat, dumb, lazy" due to cheap energy was in elementary school gym class. There was one day when the gym teacher gathered us all together and told us the many ways modern automation would tempt us to be lazy/less active, which would lead to health problems. He told us to ride our bikes "instead of asking your parents for a ride" whenever possible, and to spend our lives choosing the manual way over the automated way as much as possible. I don't remember much else from that time in my life, but that one has always been vivid in my memory. It makes me wonder if our over-consumption all those years is the main cause of our over-burdened healthcare system too. It certainly leads to more pollution. Whether there's global warming or not doesn't matter- pollution isn't healthy to breath or drink.
So, if our over-consumption really is causing the economic problem that has led to the failure of all these restaurants, as well as the root of all the other problems mentioned, then that's actually good news. It would mean we could fix a whole lot of problems all at once, just by reducing our demand for modern energy - starting with the advice of my former gym teacher.
I hope the owners of the foreclosed restaurant are able to successfully defend themselves and that they find a way to navigate through this energy crisis. I hate to see locally-owned restaurants go out. I wonder if they'd be able to make better use of locally grown food like some other local restaurants do. One of the big reasons for high food prices is the fact that large-scale commercial agriculture requires oil-derived fertilizers and pesticides, and harvesting/packaging by big machines that require oil for fuel, but many of the local farms (like Moulton's) try to stay away from pesticides and use mostly manual labor. So I wonder if local farms might have cheaper food? I wonder this because I already found some local dairy farms are selling milk for less than $3 a gallon -- cheaper than both Wal Mart and Market Basket. Local restaurants should look into solutions like that, especially 51 Mill St. if they are able to keep it.