And the Crazy Amount We Consume

Why Am I Bringing This Up?

Every work day I commute 100 miles (160 kilometers) roundtrip. To help save on gas, I travel on a small motorcycle: a 2014 Kawasaki Ninja 300 ABS. Every day I top it off with about 2 gallons (7.5 liters) of gasoline. Not too shabby, if you do the math, because that means my little motorcycle gets about 50 miles per gallon (21 kilometers per liter). But even with the great mileage, I’ve been wondering lately how much gasoline I’ve really been using…

The Amount of Gasoline I Consume

2 gallons (7.5 liters) of gasoline each work day
10 gallons (37.5 liters) of gasoline each week (at 5 work days per week)
40 gallons (150 liters) of gasoline each month (at 4 weeks average per month)
520 gallons (1950 liters) of gasoline each year (I don’t really take vacations)

So, every year I burn about 520 gallons (1950 liters) of gasoline, a highly toxic and dangerous chemical. This is the equivalent to burning 5-6 bathtubs full of gasoline each year. Keep in mind, I’m driving to work on my little motorcycle, a vehicle smaller and more efficient than most automotive vehicles in the world. If you consider that average cars only get half of the mileage that I do, then that means that most cars who are commuting like me are burning twice as much gas listed above.

Which leads me to my next question: If there are more drivers on the road than ever before, how much gasoline are we collectively burning up?…

The Amount the U.S.A. Consumes

Americans are the leaders when it comes gasoline consumption. Big surprise. I’m pretty sure if cars could put on weight they’d be fat, too. Anyways, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Americans consume about 384 million gallons (1,453 million liters) each day, or roughly 140 billion gallons (530 billion liters) of gasoline each year. With a population of about 325 million, that means that every individual, whether they drive or not, is doing the equivalent of taking more than 1 gallon (4 liters) of gasoline every single day and burning it into the atmosphere.

The Amount the World Consumes

World consumption of gasoline estimates roughly 14 million barrels a day.
If we assume that each barrel holds 42 gallons (159 liters) of gasoline, that’s 560 million gallons (2,120 million liters) every day.
16,800 million gallons (63,600 million liters) every month.
204,400 million gallons (773,800 million liters) every year.

To help put this into perspective, that’s the equivalent of burning an Olympic-size swimming pool with 660,000 gallons (2,498,000 liters) of gasoline every 15 seconds into the atmosphere.

An Answer?

I’d like to say that there is a simple answer to preventing the release of more poisonous gasoline into the air, because in fact the answer is simple: stop using gasoline. The real problem is that not enough people are going to do it.

Think about it for a second: Our entire world is the way that it is because of oil and gasoline. Trains, airplanes, trucks, cars, lawnmowers, generators, space shuttles, etc. all run on this type of fuel. To say that our society should stop using gasoline and oil is almost the same as saying that our world and its economy should stop existing. No one is going to give it up, not even at the prospect of annihilation, because the reality is that the small amount of people in politics and in the oil companies who have the power and influence over this product are not going to stop using their money-maker without a fight.

So, enjoy your lungs while you have them.

Thank you for reading this blog entry!

Brightfool

“Our brightest are still fools, while our fools think they are bright.”

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