Eat, or drive...those are the two biggest choices facing most Americans today.

According to a lot of energy "experts" - and they seem to be coming out of the woodwork now that "green" is vogue for the first time since Kermit The Frog won an Emmy - the U.S. can reduce its dependency on foreign oil simply by converting to ethanol, or by putting solar panels inside our baseball caps.

But any agriculture student worth a bowl of rice can tell you that if we converted every single acre of farm land to corn or grain (which is converted to sugar, which ultimately leads to ethanol, which can be added to gasoline), we'd still only provide maybe 12 percent of our oil needs and then...get this...we wouldn't have any food.

As the U.S. encourages (through tax subsidies) more farmers to convert their crops to corn in an effort to produce ethanol there is a major food shortage in the world today. "In the United States, as much as one-third of the maize crop will go to the gas tank and this is a huge blow to the world food supply, so these programs (subsidies) should be cut back immediately," economist Jeffry Sachs (he is also director of the Earth Institute at Columbia) told Associated Press last week. Riots have broken out in a number of countries in recent weeks as global food prices have soared. Last month, top international food scientists called for an end to food-based bio-fuels such as ethanol.

While we haven't seen many riots in Nevada County (just a few small skirmishes in Aisle 2) I was at a Mexican restaurant in Nevada City last week and the owner told me the price of rice had climbed 70 percent. I suspect we'll see a few local restaurants shut down this summer as their costs exceed their ability to pass them along to the customer. It's tough to raise your prices when your customer base is already shrinking from a weak economy that is getting weaker as oil prices continue to climb. And most restaurants are already running on a slim profit margin.

We'll see local riots as soon as beer drinkers realize that the price of barley also is up more than 50 percent. A six-pack of Bud will soon cost as much as a bottle of Dom Perignon and then the riots will rage. When you're out of gas and have no food it was comforting knowing there's at least a cold beer in the fridge.

There is a disturbing pattern at play.

What to do? How about we get the oil we have in our own backyards? As much as I'd like to believe otherwise, there is no "quick fix" on the oil dependency front and we're going to need it at least into the foreseeable future. It's what the trucks, ships and planes need to get food to our stores and eventually into our bellies. I don't think they've produced a hybrid 16-wheeler, or cargo jet yet. At the same time, we need to continue to provide incentives that will allow us to "power down" gradually and reduce our need for the 30 million or so barrels we suck up per day, while we pursue the oil within our reach and, in some cases, beneath our feet.

I have a friend named Mike who, for the past 17 years, has worked on an oil platform off the coast of central California. When he's not working on the platform, Mike lives in Penn Valley. He works on the platform for two weeks and gets a week off, which isn't a bad gig, come to think of it. Mike says there's lots and lots of oil right off our own coast, but the environmentalists won't let us get it because...well...because they'd rather we get it from Nigeria (where insurgents frequently blow things up), or Iran (which is pursuing its nuclear weapons program), or Venezuela (where a nut-bag named Chavez rules), or from some other country that hates us. Cuba has hired China to drill 45 miles off the coast of Miami because the environmentalists won't allow us to get it. I'm sure we can count on Castro to give us a great deal.

Mike reminded me that the Native Americans along the California coast used to seal their canoes with the oil that seeped naturally from the ocean floor. "If it's going into the ocean on its own, what's wrong with us tapping it?" he wonders. "Ever notice that the sand along much of the coastline is black?"

I wonder who determines these policies. I doubt they are the "will of the people," which some like to flaunt. I'll bet a tank of gas that if "the people" got to vote on our current energy policies they'd much prefer we wean ourselves from our foreign oil dependency as soon as possible, while continuing to pursue alternatives. But these things are never determined by "the people," just the "special interest people," who shout louder than the rest of "the people" and eventually get their way. And if they don't get their way they sue. Even lawyers have to eat.

Unfortunately, these special interest folks seem to have us on a path toward an economy that will make 1929 look like an economic boom. Like it or not, oil is the blood of the world economy and that blood is getting thinner by the day.

Many among us are already weighing our pocketbooks, wondering how we'll pay for the gasoline we need to get to work so we can pay for the food that is costing more every day. Gas or food? Now that beer is out of the question the choices are pretty slim.

Jeff Ackerman is the publisher of The Union. His column appears on Tuesdays. Contact him at 477-4299, jeffa@theunion.com, or 464 Sutton Way, Grass Valley 95945.