New Toon: Unsustainable

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We are 5% of the world's population and consume 25% of it's oil, leaps and bounds more than any other nation. We drive gigantic gas guzzling cars, drive three blocks to our friends house, and have a lot of our goods and food shipped to us from the other side of the planet. When gas prices go up, it seems unthinkable to some that perhaps a cost saving solution would be reducing our consumption. Somehow we think we are entitled to use all this energy and are shocked--shocked!--when the reasonably expected results of our policies start to take a turn for the worse.

Calling our way of living unsustainable would be an understatement.

Beside the obvious of moving to get off oil and use renewable energy, we need to reduce our consumtion. Brazil is set to become energy independent in 2007, running all their cars on Ethanol. I fear the problem with this model for us is that our consumption is so outrageously high it would take fields the size of South America itself to produce enough ethanol to get Americans to work (each in their own individual car).