How much energy do we consume, driving?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pinto Girl @ Nov 7 2007, 09:45 AM) [snapback]536212[/snapback]</div>

There is a feedback loop keeping foreign money here, but that feedback can reverse, and when it does the effects will be rapid and catastrophic. For the present, foreign investors know that pulling out of an investment causes the value of that investment to fall. So there is a strong incentive to keep their money in U.S. government bonds, which have traditionally been safe, though low-yield. They need to leave their money here to protect the value of that same investment.

However, once a run on U.S. government bonds begins, and their value begins to fall, there is an equally-strong incentive for investors to pull all their money out to salvage what they can before the crash.

We are teetering on the brink and our leaders are unwilling to take the measures needed to shore up our economy, and the public is unwilling to make the lifestyle changes that would strengthen our economy. In particular, our savings rate is too low. I think it may even be negative. Both the public and the government are borrowing at record rates and spending money they don't have on things they don't need, thereby going deeper and deeper into debt. The risk is bankruptcy. When an individual goes bankrupt life goes on. When a government goes bankrupt the result is economic chaos and everybody suffers horribly.

 

I read somewhere that a vegetarian Hummer owner produces less CO2 than a meat eating Prius owner. I wonder if they exist, vegetarian Hummer owners...

 

I have a friend who rants about SUV owners.But then flies around the world many times a year .
Yes a jet is 50 mpg per passenger, but your talking 25,000 miles per trip.

 

I don't know if anyone has run the numbers on the "micro" level and looking at an individual's use ... I suspect it varies greatly. But in a "macro" view we can see that about half our oil use is for transportation (43 to 66% in the Google search I did). So better fuel economy would help with half of our oil use.

On the carbon front, I think it gets more complicated. Much of our electricity is generated by burning coal, so electricity could top gasoline as a "carbon emitter".

Maybe if you add up all the energy use in the US and divide by the population, then compare that number to the total gasoline sold divided by the population.

 

You can always buy carbon credits to offset your flight.
Seriously, I'd go to Maui

Also seriously... yes, it can be overwhelming. No, I don't think that any one person will "save the Earth"... however, I think that a single person, making a positive choice, will make an impact. You make one, and then someone else makes one, and this continues, and the cumulative affects are astonishing.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pinto Girl @ Nov 7 2007, 08:32 PM) [snapback]536570[/snapback]</div>

Ask him to take you to Mexico instead, or The Bahamas. Hawaii is greatly over-rated in my opinion. I didn't much care for it. Caveat: I was on the Big Island. I don't know Maui.

 

There are a few calculators out there to compute your personal energy usage and carbon footprint. Here's one, you can google for others:

http://www.bp.com/carboncalculator.do

When I did mine, my total footprint was 32 tonnes CO2 a year, of which 18 was just air travel, since I fly a lot for work. The remaining 14 tonnes was about evenly split between household (8) and ground transportation (6).

This calculator is very approximate, but the overall ratios are probably pretty close.