Gasoline consumption for America this August was at ten million barrels per day, the highest level ever. Feast your mind on that number for a moment and first get a good grip on the size of a barrel since that's forty-two gallons or probably enough to about fill two passenger cars. So ten million barrels means twenty million average cars are getting fueled every single day.
We're getting a little queasy with that number so we figure there are three hundred million Americans and maybe one hundred million cars so our maths so far mean one in five of those cars is being refueled every day. Unless they do a powerful lot of commuting, that doesn't seem possible. We know they spend large chunks of their lives commuting so that shifts more toward the probable but it still smells iffy here at the Rockhouse.
Verify the reported number for yourself at RT: Greedy guzzlers: US gasoline consumption higher than ever
There are two parts to the interest and the most obvious is it's so high when we had been thinking it had been dropping for years. The further interest is it really was dropping but for artificial reasons. From 2007 to 2012, gasoline consumption was steadily down but that's not a huge surprise when people are losing their homes as vacation planning and road trips probably were not high priorities. From 2012 to present, consumption has zoomed back to record levels and for the same reason as the last time: really large vehicles.
Unknown how it goes in your area but in Texas you're a pauper if you don't have a big truck or a big SUV and a big truck means F-350 kitted for bad ass ... or the Cowboys, as you prefer. All of these vehicles have large-displacement motors and burn far more fuel than the task requires (i.e. getting from Point A to Point B).
It seemed there was one aspect of consumption which was missing since most vehicles have improved fuel economy over previous years. There are many large-displacement vehicles but likely not the majority so it seems there must be more to explain the high consumption of fuel now. Here at the Rockhouse, that adds up to more cars on the road. They're smaller but there are more of them and they're all terrified of the tyrant road warriors in their giganto machines so it's a peach of an urban environment out there.
The sci-fi on this one is too distant for America to reach because it's strangling itself with the cars and insists they're the only solution. Mass transit is such a distant thing in this country that America shouldn't even pretend it's playing the game. If it wants to get serious, cut the military budget in half and let's start building some shit to move people around in such a way it doesn't take hours out of their lives every day to do it. How about that if America did something to make lives better instead of actively making them worse (e.g. picayune toilet laws).
They can keep their damn cars if it amuses them to do so but using a car for commuting is just fucking stupid since most of the time there's only one person in the vehicle. You couldn't find a more wasteful way to do it if you planned it. The country could easily build such wealth if it stopped wasting so much. If you break the yolk of your egg for breakfast, you will likely fry it anyway but America will throw it away and get another one. That shouldn't be such a hard thing to fix.
(Ed: only if we murder everyone in Washington!)
Yah, well it will probably take killing all the slugs in Washington but ask yourself what do they really do. They're expensive and they don't deliver anything so they're an obvious cost-cutting measure.
We're getting a little queasy with that number so we figure there are three hundred million Americans and maybe one hundred million cars so our maths so far mean one in five of those cars is being refueled every day. Unless they do a powerful lot of commuting, that doesn't seem possible. We know they spend large chunks of their lives commuting so that shifts more toward the probable but it still smells iffy here at the Rockhouse.
Verify the reported number for yourself at RT: Greedy guzzlers: US gasoline consumption higher than ever
There are two parts to the interest and the most obvious is it's so high when we had been thinking it had been dropping for years. The further interest is it really was dropping but for artificial reasons. From 2007 to 2012, gasoline consumption was steadily down but that's not a huge surprise when people are losing their homes as vacation planning and road trips probably were not high priorities. From 2012 to present, consumption has zoomed back to record levels and for the same reason as the last time: really large vehicles.
Unknown how it goes in your area but in Texas you're a pauper if you don't have a big truck or a big SUV and a big truck means F-350 kitted for bad ass ... or the Cowboys, as you prefer. All of these vehicles have large-displacement motors and burn far more fuel than the task requires (i.e. getting from Point A to Point B).
It seemed there was one aspect of consumption which was missing since most vehicles have improved fuel economy over previous years. There are many large-displacement vehicles but likely not the majority so it seems there must be more to explain the high consumption of fuel now. Here at the Rockhouse, that adds up to more cars on the road. They're smaller but there are more of them and they're all terrified of the tyrant road warriors in their giganto machines so it's a peach of an urban environment out there.
The sci-fi on this one is too distant for America to reach because it's strangling itself with the cars and insists they're the only solution. Mass transit is such a distant thing in this country that America shouldn't even pretend it's playing the game. If it wants to get serious, cut the military budget in half and let's start building some shit to move people around in such a way it doesn't take hours out of their lives every day to do it. How about that if America did something to make lives better instead of actively making them worse (e.g. picayune toilet laws).
They can keep their damn cars if it amuses them to do so but using a car for commuting is just fucking stupid since most of the time there's only one person in the vehicle. You couldn't find a more wasteful way to do it if you planned it. The country could easily build such wealth if it stopped wasting so much. If you break the yolk of your egg for breakfast, you will likely fry it anyway but America will throw it away and get another one. That shouldn't be such a hard thing to fix.
(Ed: only if we murder everyone in Washington!)
Yah, well it will probably take killing all the slugs in Washington but ask yourself what do they really do. They're expensive and they don't deliver anything so they're an obvious cost-cutting measure.
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