Can You Name the Planet's Biggest Gas Guzzler?

[mastermg]

Can You Name the Planet's Biggest Gas Guzzler?

The answer will remind you how much the green movement has in common with the anti-war crowd.


For decades, fuel consumption has been a major green issue. From miles-per-gallon to hybrids to alternative energy options and beyond, we surely now realize that the term "gas guzzler" is never a compliment. However, there's a dirty little secret rarely mentioned by the corporate media: The U.S. military is the single-largest purchaser and consumer of oil in the world.

"All the tanks, planes and ships of the U.S. military burn about 340,000 barrels of oil per day," explains Michael Graham Richard at TreeHugger.com. "If you break it down, the Air Force uses the most fuel, followed by the Navy, and then the Army. If the Department of Defense were a country, it would rank about 38th in the world for oil consumption, right behind the Philippines, a country with a population of 90.5 million people."

According to 2007 CIA World Fact Book, when oil consumption is broken down per capita, the U.S. Department of Defense ranks fourth in the world (behind three actual nations, that is.)

Some facts on U.S. military fuel usage since 2003:

Spending:
2003: $5.21 billion
2007: $12.61 billion

Consumption:
2003: 145.1 million barrels
(397,500 barrels per day)
2007: 132.5 million barrels
(363,000 barrels per day)

2007 U.S. military fuel consumption equals:
90% more than Ireland's annual consumption
38% more than Israel's annual consumption
20 times Iceland's annual consumption

Of course, this is not a problem with a simple solution. Sure, we can make furniture from U.S. army howitzer cartridge cases from the Vietnam war era but that's not exactly gonna slow military gas guzzling. Environmentalists Against War (EAW) have opted for the coalition approach, e.g. cross-pollinating activist camps. In 2003, EAW presented its ten reasons to oppose the ongoing American military intervention in Iraq. These included:

* War destroys human settlements and native habitats. War destroys wildlife and contaminates the land, air and water. The damage can last for generations.

* U.S. cluster bombs, thermobaric explosions, electromagnetic bursts, and weapons made with depleted uranium are indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction.

* Bombs pollute, poisoning the land with unexploded shells and toxic chemicals.


If anti-war activists can lend a hand in the name of climate justice, surely you devoted greenies can make the connections that war is always an assault on the natural world. Hey, if the FBI is watching all of us anyway, what have we got to lose?

See you on the barricades, comrades...
<span style="color:#00FF00">Get involved in the anti-war (and hence green) movement.

http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tech-tran...as-guzzler.html

[---]

NO. The children and other civilians, then the plants. cross pollinate inflitration too.

[mastermg]

Lol. We should get rid of plants and people then :huh:

[---]

I just meant that I'd be surprised if it was intended as an equal balance between antiwar activists caring more about natural habitat and hardcore green activists suddenly adopting a prohuman philosophy.

[Guest]

Greenies and lefties are fucked in the head. While their intentions and motives might be honourable, they employ a double standard when it comes to Bush verus the alien president Obama.

Now that Obama's in office and says "the war in Afghanistan secures America", those two faced fucking scumbags are silent to the nth degree.

[drew hempel]

I've worked at Clean Water Action for the past 9 years and back in 2000 I did a briefing on Iraq -- projecting from the 1998 U.S. attack I argued we'd be going back into Iraq big time and that only if the progressive movement organized beforehand could it possibly be stopped. The only strong reaction I got was one dude said Saddam was the Antichrist or the equivalent and the rest went back to their "work for drug money" life (beer, pot, etc.)

[Shinobi]

lol @ alien president

[FastTadpole]

How many barrels does the average car use in a year? I'd like to equate these figures to present to greenies. So I did some math(s).

One 42 Gallon barrel produces 19.4 (on average) gallons of oil 46.2% recovery, not the widely perceived 1:1 ratio.

The average annual distance driven per car in the USA is given as
17862 km (11099 miles) in a report which quotes figures from the
International Road Federation.

@ 30 miles per gallon (12.75 km per liter) a car would consume 370 gallons (1401 liters) of gasoline per year or needs 19 barrels of oil to be refined. Produced at about $1.15 a barrel in the middle east -- but that's another story.

Compare that with a 250 mile NASCAR race, the 40 race cars (@ 2 Mpg) use a combined 5,000 gallons of gasoline which is 6.45 barrels/car or 258 barrels per race!

So if the military cut their oil use to 50% of reported 2007 level it would have the same effect as taking 3,486,842 cars off of the road. That's not even factoring in all of the private contractors (currently at a ~1:1 ratio with military personnel) stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, your average car does not release depleted uranium et. al. into the environment.

For anyone that has shed the outdated imperial system 1 US gallon = 3.78541178 L.

[psilocybin]

Drew, I love beer and pot... lay off the stoners.