Some Somber Thoughts While On Interstate 81

Last week Alma Jean and I braved Interstate 81  traffic to attend the 70-year reunion of her Lancaster Mennonite School high school graduating class. There we reflected on the changes we've all experienced in the many years that have gone by, along with noting all the members of the 1956 class who are no longer with us. All of this was sobering enough, but other issues also occupied my mind while en route.

An Unsustainable Volume of Highway Traffic

     Alma Jean often recalls her many trips to and from Eastern Mennonite College (now EMU) from Juniata County in Pennsylvania after graduating from LMS. All of these were via Highway 11 from Harrisburg to Harrisonburg. 

     The volume of cars and trucks on I-81 today has far exceeded the increase in population in the decades that followed. Improved roads built for higher speeds inevitably generate more traffic, and the increase in the number of trucks bearing all of the exotic (versus native) foods and other consumer goods we demand has also greatly added to the traffic on the highway. I especially noticed the number of Amazon Prime trucks delivering all the stuff we now buy online. 

     With diesel fuel at over $6 a gallon in vehicles that average 6-7 MPG, it's not hard to imagine how all of this is driving up costs, polluting our air and accelerating the pace of climate change. 

An Unimaginable Amount Of Corn Grown For Animal Consumption

     Acre after acre of field corn along rural areas of Interstate 81 are sure signs of America's unsustainable appetite for beef, poultry and dairy products, all requiring tons of grain, especially corn, to produce. How much we could reduce or entirely eliminate world hunger, I wondered, if we were growing twice the grain, bean and other vegetable crops on the world's agricultural land, food that could go more directly from our fields to the plates of families around the world. 

     Alma Jean and I haven't gone 100% vegetarian, and we still enjoy milk with our morning cereal, use eggs in many of our recipes, and indulge in some over-processed and over-packaged food products from our nearby supermarket. But we are finding local produce and food grown in our 10' x 60' garden ever more satisfying, especially as we realize it takes six pounds of grain in a feedlot to produce a pound of beef at the supermarket. 

    This high demand for beef contributes to more and more of the Amazon rain forest, the "lungs  of the planet," being destroyed, which further contributes to climate change and other dire conditions our children and grandchildren will be left to face. Hence the word somber in my title.

    But what do you think?