Friday, July 18, 2008

Shame on me.

Treehugger has a frightening statistic in this post that references a Wired blog post. This is the gist:


37 Million vs. 1.3 Billion

Truly an amazing statistic, via Wired. According to the California Energy Commission, the state with its 37 million people uses more gasoline and diesel than any other country on Earth except the US as a whole. That's more than India with its 1.1 billion people. More than China with its 1.3 billion. So while demand has been increasing in China and everybody's talking about that, they forget to look at absolute numbers: 20 billion gallon of gasoline and diesel are used each year in California, 6.7 billion gallons more than in 1988.


That really strikes to the unfairness of our way of life. The Wired post refers to a report of the California Energy Commission that provides a roadmap to energy efficiency and it's not going to be a smooth ride.

What amazes me is California is blessed with so many benefits, mild weather, fertile land, natural resources. Why are we burning so much fuel. We are in effect localvores relative to the rest of the country. What gives?

1 Comments:

At 11:20 AM , Blogger ruchi said...

Because there are huge flaws with California's public transit. Sure if you live in San Francisco, you can get away without a car. In Cupertino? San Jose? Not so much. BART really needs to be brought down to San Jose but so far it hasn't happened.

In LA it's worse. I live in one of the few parts of the city where taking the subway is a viable option. If you live on the West side, you're pretty much screwed and you'll have to take the very slow buses everywhere.

Does San Diego even HAVE a subway or non-bus option?

 

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