Liposuction: The Key to Energy Independence

Everyone talks about our terrible dependency on oil – foreign and otherwise – but hardly anyone mentions what it is. Fossil fuel, all right, but whose fossils? Mostly tiny plants called diatoms, but quite possibly a few Barney-like creatures went into the mix, like Stegosaurus, Brontosaurus and other giant reptiles that shared the Jurassic period with all those diatoms. What we are burning in our cars and keeping our homes warm or cool with is, in other words, a highly processed version of corpse juice.

Think of this for a moment, if only out of respect for the dead. There you were, about 100 million years ago, maybe a contented little diatom or a great big Brontosaurus stumbling around the edge of a tar pit – a lord of the earth. And what are you now? A sludge of long-chain carbon molecules that will be burned so that some mammalian biped can make a CVS run for Mountain Dew and chips. 

It’s an old human habit – living off the road kill of the planet. There’s evidence, for example, that early humans were engaged in scavenging before they figured out how to hunt for themselves. They’d scan the sky for circling vultures, dash off to the kill site--hoping that the leopard that did the actual hunting had sauntered off for a nap-- and gobble up what remained of the prey. It was risky, but it beat doing your own antelope tracking.

We continue our career as scavengers today, attracted not by vultures but by signs saying “Safeway” or “Giant.” Inside these sites, we find bits of dead animals wrapped neatly in plastic. The killing has already been done for us – usually by underpaid immigrant workers rather than leopards.

I say to my fellow humans: It’s time to stop feeding off the dead and grow up! I don’t know about food, but I have a plan for achieving fuel self-suffiency in less time than it takes to say “Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.” The idea came to me from reports of the growing crime of French fry oil theft: Certain desperate individuals are stealing restaurants’ discarded cooking oil, which can then be used to fuel cars. So the idea is: why not could skip the French fry phase and harvest high-energy hydrocarbons right from ourselves?

I’m talking about liposuction, of course, and it’s a mystery to me why it hasn’t occurred to any of those geniuses who are constantly opining about fuel prices on MSNBC. The average liposuction removes about half a gallon of liquid fat, which may not seem like much. But think of the vast reserves our nation is literally sitting on! Thirty percent of Americans are obese, or about 90 million individuals or 45 million gallons of easily available fat – not from dead diatoms but from our very own bellies and butts.

This is the humane alternative to biofuels derived directly from erstwhile foodstuffs like corn. Biofuels, as you might have noticed, are exacerbating the global food crisis by turning edible plants into gasoline. But we could put humans back in the loop by first turning the corn into Doritos and hence into liposuctionable body fat. There would be a reason to live again, even a patriotic rationale for packing on the pounds. 

True, liposuction is not risk-free, as the numerous doctors’ websites on the subject inform us. And those of us who insist on driving gas guzzlers may soon start depleting their personal fat reserves, much as heroin addicts run out of useable veins. But the gaunt, punctured, look could become a fashion statement. Already, the combination of a tiny waist and a huge carbon footprint—generated by one’s Hummer and private jet -- is considered a sign of great wealth.

And think what it would do for our nation’s self-esteem. We may not lead the world in scientific innovation, educational achievement, or low infant mortality, but we are the global champions of obesity. Go to   http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity  and you’ll find America well ahead of the pack when it comes to personal body fat, while those renowned oil-producers --Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Iran-- aren’t even among the top 29. All we need is a healthy dose of fat pride and for CVS to start marketing home liposuction kits. That run for Mountain Dew and chips could soon be an energy-neutral proposition.

Comments

[Michelle B]

Shades of Swift's "A Modest Proposal"!

[Richard Mudd]

I just saw you on the Colbert Report and watched your ignorant comments about Wal-Mart. I don't know when you were working at Wal-Mart but I have worked there within the last year at two different Wal-Marts and everyone I met there had plenty of money to buy what they needed at Wal-Mart. They may not have been leading the most comfortable lifestyles but you aren't going to in a job like that. Most people I knew working there, with the exception of high school students, made over eight dollars an hour some even as high as ten fifty an hour. Not to mention Wal-Mart gives everyone a chance to move up within the company. The ignorance you ramble out of your mouth is astounding. I left my email address if you want to respond to me but you better have some actual knowledge on this issue because the stupidity you showed on the Colbert Report was almost offensive if it wasn't so humorous.

[Chickensh*tEagle]

I've always liked "Burn ass, not gas" as a slogan for bike riding. But I guess it would be consistent with American attitudes to interpret that as meaning burning liposuctioned fat from others. :-(

[lc2]

Barbara,

I don't understand how you can at once claim to have so much sympathy for the economic losers of this society, and show such utter contempt for their lifestyle choices, only some of which are true choices at all.

We can't all work for a couple of hours in the a.m. and then hit the gym before getting back to work, as you say you do. We also can't all shop at Whole Foods (as you say you do) and avoid corn- and high-fructose-corn-syrup fortified foods. Some of us are actually tied to the work floor, the entire shift, have commuting time, and then have responsibilities at home and in the community. That's how convenience foods and forgoing exercise start to creep in. We're not all working those jobs to make SUV and Disney timeshare payments, either. Sure we all know better and should get our asses on a bike, but we don't all have leisure class jobs like you and your friends do. There are only so many hours in a day.

Seems like you need to make the (not very big) leap to see obesity in this country as a public health crisis and a clear result of national policy on agriculture subsidies, auto-based housing clusters, the end of the 40-hour work week, cheap cable, etc. Not everyone who is overweight/obese sits and eats Pringles while watching Nascar on TV all night. Some of us are beyond exhausted from running around volunteering here after working there and can't believe we are chubby after all that activity.

This essay really disappoints. It's weird that you see how people are manipulated in the labor market, but not in the rest of their lives. And I say this as someone who goes to considerable trouble to avoid manipulation -- mainly by chucking out the TV.

You'd have a very hard time working in the trenches with the general public for longer than your Nickel and Dimed stints. I predict that if you did social work or public health outreach for more than a week, you'd end up joining the conservative movement.

[Barb Ehrenreich]

lc2: This was not meant to be an attack on the consumers of Mountain Dew (who include some close relatives of mine.) My mistake was not pointing out that most liposuction is probably done on the non-obese who are worried about some tiny "bump." I couldn't find any numbers on this, but I suspect that they would show that there's even more readily available body fat out there than I calculated.

[gaby]

I took Barbara's blog as satire more than anything else. There are many reasons why people in this country are so enormous in size. Not a bad idea that we might as well make use of all this blubber instead of carrying it around, keeping it selfishly to ourselves.

[fryguy70]

Barb, are you sure you weren't watching YERT.com (Your Environmental Road Trip) back in early April? They did a whole video on this exact idea. Check out their funny FAT TO FUEL video at YERT.com (it's on their video page as YERTpod24.5). Looks like there's no idea that's new under the sun...not even THIS one!

[fryguy70]

Barb, are you sure you weren't watching YERT.com (Your Environmental Road Trip) back in early April? They did a whole video on this exact idea. Check out their funny FAT TO FUEL video at YERT.com (it's on their video page as YERTpod24.5). Looks like there's no idea that's new under the sun...not even THIS one!

[Brian]

I don't know if satire is really criticizable but its a tongue in cheek piece. For real depression just look at what the republicans are trying to block today to solve our problems. The commodity speculators(oil and corn in particular) are bombastically threatening us with even higher prices if our government makes any attempt at regulating them, even simply by regulating the amount of leverage they can use. The aggressive among us are moving from speculating on technology, to the net, to housing, reits, gold, oil, and corn, and as each bubble eventually collapses they just move to the next one. They rarely have to pay for their mistakes as they are operating heads using other peoples money and modestly just take the profits if they win. If they lose they just close the account and move on. Hah hah, it just makes me laugh as its beyond money. I don't recommend liposuction as it carrys some surgical risk and is just sounds so unseemly. But sure we could eat better, or less say, walk more, and really try and eat less processed foods. I even skip breakfast or lunch every couple of days regularly but check with your doctor if you have any health problems first. I think that is how we use to be in nature before the refrigerator. One person commented about how the underclass behaves poorly so they deserve what they get. Well now the rich are ramming that same yoke on the middle class and I think they deserve better. And meanwhile, even Secy of the Treasury Paulson says speculators have no effect in the oil market, its all supply and demand. Then the republicans say we must drill drill drill seeing an opportunity for a new land and environmental grab. Disgusting, as no one is talking the obvious big benifits of increasing fuel and energy efficency, further diversifying out of oil, or even putting foward a progressive nuclear reactor program using new safer technologies and starting to dispose of all the thousands? of tons of spent nuclear waste around. We have a site already half built in Nevada held up in a political log jam. I can assure you driving thru traffic to work is thousands of times more hazardous and no I don't work for the industry. Worse the Gaurdian UK is now carrying actual coverage of who is speaking in Congress and what is actually going on as our media won't. A nasa scientist referenced in Drudge recommended we impeach the top oil executives for keeping us perpetually in this precarious position. No wonder Exxon payed Lee Raymond 400 million dollars at his retirement. Now he has a family dynasty out of it. As for the poor walmart workers, well I guess they are stuck providing the basics that grease our society's skids. The best you can do is make sure your kids study and get as many A's as possible and get them involved in clubs or groups that expand their social skills and horizons. Maybe they will get to be Doctors or Lawyers or gasp, brokers and at least get a toe hold into what remains of the middle class. Otherwise they could end up at wally mart or some such place struggling to buy chicken dogs for sunday dinner. But then we know the colleges will suck your finances dry and put you further in debt. Why is this country so failing us and our elected government just sits on its hands and caves into special interests time and time again????????

[Nancy]

What about sucking that energy out through connecting exercise machinery at places where people work out to the electric grid? I've always thought that would be a very workable idea.
I think some of the people responding to your posting do not have a sense of humor.

[chris]

For the New Yorkers -- Barb is speaking at Barnes & Noble tonight -- June 25 at 7 pm. The B&N is at the north end of Union Square in Manhattan.

Official Website
barbaraehrenreich.com
Schedule

6/25/08 7pm

Profile
Social critic to the masses Barbara Ehrenreich famously left behind her comfy middle-class life and worked minimum wage in a Wal-Mart, a nursing home, and a diner to write her best seller Nickeled and Dimed. With This Land Is Their Land, Ehrenreich has compiled 62 satirical essays that use wisecracking anecdotes instead to illustrate how this new Gilded Age seriously cramps the average person's style. In one, she describes how the rich “have hogged all the good scenery,” in turn affecting the mental health and QOL of those who can’t afford to experience nature. Prepare to be good-naturedly riled up tonight. — Elizabeth L. Cline

[paperpusher666]

Nancy, you'd be surprised how hard you have to pedal just to keep a generator-powered bike light lit. Effciency of energy conversion is what does in a lot of processes that SEEM to make sense. We do well to get 60% efficiency.

Now, suppose that we could harvest a million pounds a day sustainably via home liposuction kits. This might render into 700K pounds of fat that would burn cleanly, though it would be rather like lard, so you'd have to mix it with something to keep it in a liquid state if you want to use it for motor fuel.

Where would it be processed? Unless you're dealing with ton or more quantities, it is difficult to process it economically. The energy recovered less energy invested wouldn't be a net positive. I can imagine (because I'm nuts) a THIRD recycle bin to add to the regular two for paper and metal/glass for body fat, but you'd have to process it quickly before it got rank.

Now, if we can get glycerine out of the fat, we can use it to make bombs!

[paperpusher666]

Nancy, you'd be surprised how hard you have to pedal just to keep a generator-powered bike light lit. Effciency of energy conversion is what does in a lot of processes that SEEM to make sense. We do well to get 60% efficiency.

Now, suppose that we could harvest a million pounds a day sustainably via home liposuction kits. This might render into 700K pounds of fat that would burn cleanly, though it would be rather like lard, so you'd have to mix it with something to keep it in a liquid state if you want to use it for motor fuel.

Where would it be processed? Unless you're dealing with ton or more quantities, it is difficult to process it economically. The energy recovered less energy invested wouldn't be a net positive. I can imagine (because I'm nuts) a THIRD recycle bin to add to the regular two for paper and metal/glass for body fat, but you'd have to process it quickly before it got rank.

Now, if we can get glycerine out of the fat, we can use it to make bombs!

[noname]

If you want to decode yours or others Yahoo Messenger archive files try now http://www.ymdecoder.com This is a free online tool.

[chris]

Liposuction -- answered prayers? Yeah.

Just ask Olivia Goldsmith and Kanye West's mother. Actually, you can't. They're dead. Dead from botched liposuction operations.

Are these two operating-room deaths significant? Absolutely. According to a scientific study of cosmetic surgery fatalities, 99.9% involved women. Investigators were suprised to learn the figure was less than 100%, as there are no known cases of men undergoing similar forms of elective surgery.

However, researchers discovered that one doctor had been murdered during a surprise attack in an operating room by a former stripper, whose faulty breast augmentation surgery caused a large gel-sac to slide around to her spine during a pole dance, leading to the loss of her job.

What could have motivated Olivia Goldsmith to subject herself to cosmetic surgery? Why did this woman want liposuction? She was the highly successful author of "The First Wives Club", which was made into a movie. She had other writing successes.

Was she disturbed about the size of her carbon footprint? Was she thinking if there were less of her, her carbon footprint would also shrink? Did that lead her to feel that if she ceased to exist she would leave the smallest carbon footprint of all? Wh o knows?

Maybe she just disliked eating right and exercising. Those sentiments explain a lot of the obesity in America.

Based on the amount of exercise equipment hawked on TV -- Perfect Pushups (not a bra from Victoria's Secret), Bowflex, StairMaster, videos of Tae Bo, Workouts with Jillian -- visitors from Mars would think Americans are obsessed with building good physiques through physical training.

Clearly it takes a nation that leads the world when it comes to patenting inventions to develop so many different ways to build muscles and defeat fat.

Meanwhile, in other countries, like Saudi Arabia and Iran, cosmetic surgery is not permitted. The Islamic Committees Against Vice and Depravity have simplified the issue by outlawing the display of the female body. Hence, if Olivia Goldsmith had lived in Saudia Arabia, no one would have known whether she was a blubbery load or a hot chick since she'd have had to keep every square inch of herself covered by her burka in the 125-degree heat.

Moreover, her Saudi male masters would have burned her manuscripts and probably stoned her to death in a public execution for expressing thoughts of sexual desire and orgasms.

[Weebitty]

I really like it better when you speak on topics you have clearly researched and thought critically about.

You might want to do some reading about the myths behind the obesity scare--you'll find lots of science twisted for profit, classism, racism, and sexism galore.

Maybe you won't parrot those "isms" so much in your satire. Blech.

Prejudice against fat people hurts them more than fat does.

[lc2]

Thanks for saying what I was trying to get across much more succinctly and meaningfully, Weebitty.

Obamabots might want to check their blatantly elitist attitudes pre-Nov. It will not help the progressive cause to so openly snicker at average folks. Wait till after the election to remind everyone how much smarter/thinner/less they are than Nascar-watchers and Wal-Mart shoppers.

As for plastic surgery ... it's clearly in the province of the monied. I'm over cackling over caricatures of upper-income Americans and have actually moved on to pity. Their predilections are so shallow, I can't be bothered getting my knickers in a twist over McMansion-dwelling suburbanites. They've dug their own graves and will be the first to borrow a Smart car and amble out to the country to implore rural un-sophisticates to grow an extra acre just for their family (or their gas tanks). They will be humbled soon enough ... having to indefinitely put off lipo and nose jobs will be the least of it.

On the other hand, gastric bypass/lapband is by and large a middle- and lower-income surgery (for the lucky few who have insurance).

[Richard]

Soylent Oil is People. Yikes, how desperate are we. Lets get off our fat asses and kick the driving habit. Walking and cycling will take care of the fat just fine.

[Jennifer]

Gotta say I agree with LC2, even after reading Ms. Ehrenreich's reply.

This essay (and many of the recent essays) comes off as more mean-spirited snark than the compassionate sense of absurdity that characterized Nickle and Dimed and made it such an important book.

Especially since obesity is linked to income, with the poor and working poor often unable to afford healthy and nutritious foodstuffs. (Remember how you found that out at the food shelf in Minneapolis?)

On the other hand, though, when we're all working writers, producing at the same level Ms. Ehrenreich has produced over her long career, we'll be in a better position to throw stones.

The more a writer works, the more apt she is to produce a clunker now and then.

I just miss the compassion, the humility, and the razor sharp bullshit detector that characterized your earlier writing and I did think this one borders on the kind of poor taste more worthy of Maureen Dowd than Barbara Ehrenreich.

There was a reason your fans thought you should have replaced Dowd at the New York Times -- and it wasn't because we saw any similarities in your tone or style!

[John]

Dear Ms. Ehrenreich:

Are you or have you ever been a member of the communist party?

[lc2]

Jennifer,

Dowd's latest column illustrates your comments to a T. She is so far-removed from the masses, she has no idea that most of us are in near-survival mode (in terms of keeping solvent, American-style, nobody need remind me that this isn't Cambodia).

According to Dowd, Repubs. need Rove-ian style spindoctors to convince the public that Obama is out of touch. Funny thing is, Obama doesn't seem to me to need any help exposing himself as an elitist who can't be bothered with the nitty-gritty details of how people eke out a living in this country. Columbia and Princeton undergrads probably make more money intering for the summer in law firms, than most working women make in 9 mos. at an hourly wage. How can we possibly expect this person, or Maureen Dowd, or Barbara Ehrenreich, to appreciate what the crushing angst the American working class is facing right now?

I am all for a president who's way, way smarter than me, but (s)he should be able to grasp the fact that very, very few of us are not living paycheck to paycheck. There is such a thing as being smart and having vision and also seeing issues in terms of dollars and cents.

It seems from Barbara's experience and her current commentary, that it really does require being steeped in those everyday realities to appreciate the desperate quality of them. What a failure of imagination. I currently have a $500 or so cushion in my bank acct ... but it doesn't mean I have forgotten what it was like to have the heat set at 58 degrees all winter, and still be behind on oil payments. Too bad we don't have any prominent writers who can remember those days and advocate for those of us who are still thick in the midst of them.

[Anarcissie]

No one who can run (seriously) for the presidency has any recent experience of being behind in his or her oil payments. That's not the way things work.

In any case, do the hard-pressed workers care? In recent years they seem to have been more concerned with religious and cultural issues than with their own economic welfare. The supposed elitism of Obama is a case in point. Obama is no more or less elite than his competitors, but trivial differences of style have been blown up into a major pseudo-issue.

[chris]

The solution is not LIP-o-suction. It is LIB-o-suction.

If it were possible to extract the debilitating LIBeral infection from the minds of the most severely impaired, we'd see an increase in domestic employment through the expansion of oil drilling in the US, declining oil prices, lower food prices and more success with conservation efforts -- such as nuclear plants, solar, wind and other alternative energy technologies.

[Jennifer]

I don't know, LC. I think you're reading too much into a simple post (albeit an endemic problem on this blog).

Yeah, Dowd sucks and the Times should have hired Ehrenreich instead.

This blog post didn't go over well. The satire is more nasty than witty.

But I don't think it's any huge commentary on Maureen Dowd, the presidential election, or Barbara Ehrenreich's usual writing skill.

This one was just a clunker. I'm looking forward to the next one.

[Brian]

Well you all have seen the sunday ABC hourly political news show with George Stephanoupolous and the fine tailered suits and dresses the pinacles of the wealthy correspondant's of the American world sit? I suppose most are all multimillionaires with the exception of Robert Reich when the wealthy need a working person's counterpoint. How did we get this way when our A list actors, sports players, and journalists are simply so darn rich? They are an elite reporting of things that appeal to those with too much time on their hands, sort of modern gossip posts. I would love to see a master list of the annual reported incomes, or even pay rates, these people make so we know just how wealthy the journalists are. Our society has made them an elite segment of our ruling class.