Comments on: $1.1 billion per day

By: Judy

Judy — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 04:38:32 +0000

I don’t know that those within biking distance are necessarily the largest source of the problem among commuters. It’s those that live 30 minutes to an hour from work with the carbon footprint larger than bigfoot himself.

I saw an interesting cost of commuting calculator on a Colorado real estate website that was quite interesting: It demonstrates how – contrary to common belief – most people would actually save money by buying a more expensive home that is closer to work.

Check it out: http://www.AutomatedHomefinder.com

By: Fritz

Fritz — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:31:16 +0000

3% sounds like a tiny number, but the U.S. has typically spent something like half a percent of the GDP on oil imports since U.S. production peaked in 1973. In itself this is still doesn’t mean much of course, especially since the US has been above 1% GDP for energy imports for a couple of years now. But Energy growth = economic growth, so when energy consumes a greater portion of our GDP while energy use declines, the result is recession.

I forgot to complete the thought on this in my original post, but U.S. exports are also up dramatically, so of course it’s not all bad news.

By: Brian Carnell

Brian Carnell — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:17:18 +0000

“The United States spent a record $34.4 billion on foreign oil in November, according to a U.S. Commerce Department report. That’s $1,130,000,000 we’re sending overseas every single day, and is a whopping 25% increase over 2006 in nominal dollars.”

So what. In 2006 dollars, the US GDP was $13.3 trillion. So our total “foreign” oil consumption was $412 billion if we annualize as @2 did. So we spent 3 percent of our GDP on oil imports at a time when oil was near record highs. Color me unimpressed.

By: JoelGuelph

JoelGuelph — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 00:10:42 +0000

I just realized that was probably a monthly figure, not yearly and just came back to correct myself. You beat me to it.

By: Fritz

Fritz — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 00:06:19 +0000

(34.4 billion per month) x (12 months) = $412,800,000,000

Yes, almost half a trillion dollars annualizing November’s number, and November is a slow month in terms of gasoline consumption.

$412,800,000,000 / 365 days = ~$1,300,000,000/day

By: JoelGuelph

JoelGuelph — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 23:30:14 +0000

I hate to be the mathematician here, but wouldn’t 34.4 billion be more like 0.11 billion per day? Actually it is more like 0.094 billion or 94 million per day, or 132 million per business day.

Regardless, it is still alarming. Especially the whole business of growing corn for ethanol for fuel. I don’t see how it ever made sense for something that takes over 1 gallon of gasoline to produce 1 gallon of ‘eco-friendly’ fuel. Not only the negative returns but the fact that there is far less corn being grown for food! It is a bad situation.

I personally hope gas prices go up quickly and dramatically. Hopefully it will wake people up to the fact that a paradigm shift is necessary.