Woohoo- first place!!

Kidding of course, pretty shocking chart. Thanks for posting it.

 

I'll start with, there is no excuse for the United States' population to be so gluttonous. It's wholly wrongful in all regards.

However! We do have quite a few things not in our favor (beyond the general populous' desire for gas hungry cars).

Our country covers a very large piece of land and our cities are very spread out.

1 Russia 17,075,200 sqkm
2 Canada 9,976,140 sqkm
3 United States 9,629,091 sqkm
4 China 9,596,960 sqkm
5 Brazil 8,511,965 sqkm

There are a whole lot of us.

1 China 1,284,303,705
2 India 1,045,845,226
3 United States 280,562,489
4 Indonesia 231,328,092
5 Brazil 176,029,560

If you look at the consumption per population we're 5th, according to this website.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/en...ily-per-capita

Though I think this chart is the most telling of all. It shows amount of oil production (vertically) with amount of oil consumption (horizontally) and the size of the circle denotes national population (as of 2003).

http://www.nationmaster.com/plot/ene...percap/peo_pop

The best place to be would be the upper left. Producing lots of oil, and selling most of it. It appears the United States makes nearly the least and consumes nearly the most. And we're consuming quite a lot just getting it here.

So my conclusion, yay, we bought hybrids. But a better idea is simply don't drive. Personally I don't like giving my money to people who attack us, but it seems the majority of the population doesn't care.

 

Couldn't agree more, LoudMusic. On ALL points. Not only does the majority of our population not care, but neither does our government. The national security concerns alone should startle our country into making major energy policy changes.

Nice charts. Why is Singapore 'off the charts', in their consumption rates?

 

If Europe and Asia's cities were half Black and Hispanic like ours are, they would have to drive 30 miles outside downtown to find a safe neighborhood too.

 

We also lack an efficient transit infrastructure that doesn't involve cars. E.g. to get from town to town in this country, you generally *must* use a car -- as probably there is no reasonable alternative.

Passenger train infrastructure is pretty much extinct in all places other than the Atlantic coast (you can take a train from Boston to New York to Washington. Anywhere else the train is probably not an option and certainly NOT cost effective (it's almost alway considerably more expensive than flying and the scheduling is usually completely inflexible (often just one departure option per day) and with so few trains running the routes are limited and require connections with enormously long layovers (given that your connection may have just one departure time per day -- you could be waiting a very long time).

Nope, in this country if your destination is far away then you fly. If it's reasonably close enough to be within driving distance than you drive. For most of the country, mass-transit is simply not an option that we have.

 

Interesting how Canada and USA are almost identical on a per capita basis.

 

Well, that was about the most racist thing I've read in a long while.

 

It's not clear from that chart whether that's petrol for everything or just for driving.