As America grows by 3,000,000 people annually on its way to adding 100 million people in the next 33 years, our planet home grows by 77 million people each year and will add another 2.1 billion by 2040.
In order to drive cars, boats, planes and fuel industry, Americans use 20 million barrels of oil each day while the rest of the world burns 62 million barrels. That equals 82 million barrels of oil every 24 hours!
When you multiply 365 days X's 82,000,000 barrels of oil burned daily, it equals a whopping 29.9 billion barrels of oil annually.
If you remember your science, it took two billion years to produce all the oil on this planet. In other words, when oil reserves burn up, we're out of the single major energy source that drives our society and most other societies on this planet.
How much is 20 million barrels of oil? Dr. John Tanton, publisher of The Social Contract at www.thesocialcontract.com, wrote a piece, "How Many Is Twenty Million?"
"In this age of millions, billions and trillions, it's hard to understand such numbers," Dr. Tanton said. "Twenty million is the number of barrels of oil we burn in the United States each day."
That's 42 gallons to each barrel (drum) at 30 inches tall and 20 inches in diameter, or 840,000,000 gallons burned per day. It works out, according to Dr. Tanton's figures, to three gallons of oil per day per person in the USA. (Source: The Social Contract, winter 2004-05, page 151)
He said, "Suppose we took 20 million barrels and stood them side-by-side. How long a line of barrels would that make? Let's do the math: 20 inches/barrel multiplied by 20 million barrels equals 400,000,000 inches. Divide that by 12 inches/foot, and you get 33,333,333 feet. Divide that by 5,280 feet per mile, and that comes out to 6,313 miles."
Dr. Tanton figured that would make a string of barrels, "...reaching from Seattle to Los Angeles (1,157 miles), from Los Angeles to Chicago (2,134 miles), from Chicago to Miami (1,377 miles), from Miami to New York City (1,281 miles), and from New York City to Cleveland (486 miles). Total mileage, 6,435."
"That's how much oil we burn in the USA each day," Tanton said. "The total global consumption daily rate of 82 million would be four times this amount, or 25,000 miles-the circumference of the globe at the equator!"
Dr. Tanton asks a sobering question, "How much longer can this go on?"
The simple, unadulterated answer is: not much longer.
You may want to read, "Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil" by David Goodstein. He is a professor of physics at California Institute of Technology.
We used energy from the wind, sun, animals and rivers for centuries. Two hundred years ago, we became addicted to finite oil. "We have unintentionally created a trap for ourselves," Goodstein said. "If we turn to coal and natural gas, the resultant increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide may make Earth uninhabitable. Even if human life does go on, civilization as we know it will not survive, unless we can find a way to live without fossil fuels."
World oil extraction expects to peak in a decade. Goodstein, ever precise in his research, shows that those hoping for other fuels and substitutes to replace oil dangle their hopes by hanging from a thread over a cliff with no net or parachute. Societies as large as humans have created based on oil, cannot-and will not--survive.
Frosty Wooldridge Bio:
Frosty Wooldridge possesses a unique view of the world, cultures and families in that he has bicycled around the globe 100,000 miles, on six continents and six times across the United States in the past 30 years. His books (more...)
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
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