Nick Kyriazi, Deutschtown. Thursday, May 24, 2007, In the “Saturday Essay” by Gery Steighner (“What about oil shale?” May 19 and PghTrib.com), Steighner says
“For the foreseeable future, the U.S. will continue to need lots of oil in order to maintain our standard of living. That is not true. We need lots of oil in order to maintain our particular standard of living. If we changed two things — eliminated suburban development that requires automobiles and stopped eating animal products, the production of which is extreme in its inefficiency — our standard of living would be just as high (in fact, it would increase along with our quality of life) but we would need only a fraction of the oil we now need. And all that needs to happen for both of those things to occur is for the government to stop subsidizing them both.”
For example, growing crops to feed farm animals requires massive amounts of water and land. Nearly half of the water and 80 percent of the agricultural land in the United States is used to raise animals for food, according to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.