From an energy perspective, your life is worth 4 barrels of oil, says The Oil Drum, which recently published a little numbers magic to compare human labor to oil. By running on plain old food calories, in 45 years our bodies will create the same about of energy used in 4 barrels of oil. A “fair” price for this energy (roughly 5.8 million BTUs) will run you around $200,000 per barrel. And I thought $130 was expensive! Here’s more from Treehugger:

There are some dissenters in the very long thread. Some suggest that it’s an apple-orange comparison as the human body is a machine and oil is a fuel; better to compare the Big Macs eaten directly to the oil, or real-world jobs where oil directly replaces labor e.g. two men cutting logs to a single man with a chainsaw and some gas. Others suggested, for political and moral reasons, such a comparison can and should never be made, obviating the fact that humans are replaced with machines on a regular basis. What is the fair price of oil, and how should it be measured to human labor?

Cars may still run on oil-based fuels (at least for now), but we don’t. Check out some of TakePart’s efforts to bring awareness to the global food crisis here.

Related:

Farms in the sky a solution to the global food crisis? 

8 Ways to fix the global food crisis 

Gas prices exceed those of 1973 oil crisis