I recently heard some interesting statistics that you may or may not be aware of: the United States has 2% of the world's natural resources and 5% of the global population, yet consumes 25% of everything and is responsible for 25% of the total CO2 output.
Having lived in the States for almost a year now, I realise that a great deal of this consumption is not even necessary. It starts with the fact that everything is done by car, including collecting children from the school bus (which drops them off 50-100 yards from the house), and daft things like leaving car engines running while getting cigarettes at a petrol station. But it goes much, much further.
As someone pointed out, and which immediately struck a chord, when you go to a hotel in the US, all the lights in the room and often enough the TV are generally on. Although the TV has a remote control, there is no central light switch, so when you go for a meal, you theoretically have to turn every single light and bedside lamp off individually, which is easier said than done given some of the bizarre light fittings we've had to wrestle with. So people just leave them on when they go out.
There are other small, but telling examples of this wasteful use of energy: our fridge and washing machines are twice the size that our European ones were, though I doubt we or anybody else use them to full capacity. And despite having the heating element below the base (an extremely inefficient way to boil water, incidentally), our kettle has a minimum level of just under a litre. So even if I only want to make myself a cup of coffee, I have to heat up almost a litre of water.
Finally, and most well known, American cars are hugely gas-guzzling. Even though we have two Japanese-brand cars and deliberately went for fuel economy, my wife's sleek saloon car can get at best 29 miles to the gallon (8.4l/100km), while my 3.7-litre SUV manages an average of just 18mpg (12.9l/100km) with "normal" suburban use or 21mpg if I stick to motorways - that's twice as much fuel as our un-aerodynamic people-carrier consumed in France.
Perhaps instead of worrying about dwindling oil reserves and finding new sources of energy, America should start thinking about increasing energy efficiency - or making electricity and petrol so expensive that it forces people to think about consuming more responsibly.
Having lived in the States for almost a year now, I realise that a great deal of this consumption is not even necessary. It starts with the fact that everything is done by car, including collecting children from the school bus (which drops them off 50-100 yards from the house), and daft things like leaving car engines running while getting cigarettes at a petrol station. But it goes much, much further.
As someone pointed out, and which immediately struck a chord, when you go to a hotel in the US, all the lights in the room and often enough the TV are generally on. Although the TV has a remote control, there is no central light switch, so when you go for a meal, you theoretically have to turn every single light and bedside lamp off individually, which is easier said than done given some of the bizarre light fittings we've had to wrestle with. So people just leave them on when they go out.
There are other small, but telling examples of this wasteful use of energy: our fridge and washing machines are twice the size that our European ones were, though I doubt we or anybody else use them to full capacity. And despite having the heating element below the base (an extremely inefficient way to boil water, incidentally), our kettle has a minimum level of just under a litre. So even if I only want to make myself a cup of coffee, I have to heat up almost a litre of water.
Finally, and most well known, American cars are hugely gas-guzzling. Even though we have two Japanese-brand cars and deliberately went for fuel economy, my wife's sleek saloon car can get at best 29 miles to the gallon (8.4l/100km), while my 3.7-litre SUV manages an average of just 18mpg (12.9l/100km) with "normal" suburban use or 21mpg if I stick to motorways - that's twice as much fuel as our un-aerodynamic people-carrier consumed in France.
Perhaps instead of worrying about dwindling oil reserves and finding new sources of energy, America should start thinking about increasing energy efficiency - or making electricity and petrol so expensive that it forces people to think about consuming more responsibly.
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