Fuel efficiency standards for passenger vehicles in the United States have barely changed since 1985. If we had chosen to raise these standards (for cars and light trucks) by less than one half mile (0.4 miles) per year, the average car on the road would be getting 32 miles per gallon. This would reduce our oil consumption by 3.3 million barrels per day, or more than 16 times what McCain's offshore drilling would get us twenty years from now.

our cars average the same gas mileage as they did in the late ’70s

god bless america:
First in Oil Consumption:
The United States burns up 20.7 million barrels per day, the equivalent of the oil consumption of China, Japan, Germany, Russia, and India combined.
First in Carbon Dioxide Emissions:
Each year, world polluters pump 24,126,416,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the environment. The United States and its territories are responsible for 5.8 billion metric tons of this, more than China (3.3 billion), Russia (1.4 billion) and India (1.2 billion) combined.
First in External Debt:
The United States owes $10.040 trillion, nearly a quarter of the global debt total of $44 trillion.
First in Military Expenditures:
(...)Military analyst Winslow Wheeler did the math recently: "Add $142 billion to cover the anticipated costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; add $17 billion requested for nuclear weapons costs in the Department of Energy; add another $5 billion for miscellaneous defense costs in other agencies.... and you get a grand total of $647 billion for 2008."
First in Weapons Sales:
Since 2001, U.S. global military sales have normally totaled between $10 and $13 billion. That's a lot of weapons, but in fiscal year 2006, the Pentagon broke its own recent record, inking arms sales agreements worth $21 billion.

(...)After all, what does a drug dealer do? He creates a need and then fills it. He encourages an appetite or (even more lucratively) an addiction and then feeds it. Arms dealers do the same thing. They suggest to foreign officials that their military just might need a slight upgrade. After all, they'll point out, haven't you noticed that your neighbor just upgraded in jets, submarines, and tanks? And didn't you guys fight a war a few years back? Doesn't that make you feel insecure? And why feel insecure for another moment when, for just a few billion bucks, we'll get you suited up with the latest model military... even better than what we sold them -- or you the last time around. Why does Turkey, which already has 215 fighter planes, need 100 extras in an even higher-tech version? It doesn't... but Lockheed Martin, working the Pentagon, made them think they did.

englehart on hope and the apocalypse:
It masks a far darker world that your generation is about to inherit on a planet two-thirds of whose inhabitants, as a group of retired admirals and generals interested in climate change recently noted, live near a coastline (that might in coming decades flood). Put another way, according to the NGO Christian Aid, one out of every seven people on the planet -- perhaps a billion in all -- might, over the next half century (essentially your post-college work lifetimes) be forced from their homes and into the kinds of desperate migrations that would make the present American debate over illegal immigration seem like a global joke.
(...) Here's one from mine that's useful for this speech, whatever its historical accuracy. Around 1000 AD, there was a millenarian movement of peasants who, believing they saw the end days coming, built their own coffins, and, at the predicted moment, climbed into them to await their foreordained fate. To tell you the truth, I don't know what happened next. Assumedly, sooner or later they climbed out again. But here's the point I want to make: As long as you're looking at our world through your usual lenses, I suspect you're already in our version of those coffins, even if they pass for normal daily life. Only in the dark can you begin to imagine the possible Pompeii-scapes to come, the potential for the extreme unraveling of normalcy. And only after you imagine that, can you do what those peasants undoubtedly did when they realized that the last days had not come -- not yet anyway: climb out.
(...) I look out over this audience, remembering that, when I was 21, there seemed so much that needed to be done. How could it be that, over 40 years later, there seems to be so much more -- starting with somehow ending not (as in my college days) one, but two mad frontier wars, two scenes of slaughter and carnage, Iraq and Afghanistan, in a world where frontiers no longer exist? These are wars guaranteed to kill tens of thousands more and, in the long run, to endanger us all -- and there's only you to end them. There's only you, really, to change everything. It's a terrible burden that my generation of parents should never, never have loaded on your shoulders, but understand this clearly: It's not a coffin, not by a long shot.
(...) It's time to look up and read the inscription -- by now, you can surely do so with your eyes closed -- and then reformulate it. How about, for example: Abandon paralysis all ye who exit here.

on exxon organizing deception:
But though between 77% and 83% of Americans now acknowledge that global warming poses a serious problem, only 55% in a January Pew poll say the issue requires immediate government action, and only 47% in the same Pew poll say that they believe it’s human caused. This means there’s still serious denial. And to dismantle its architecture means taking on the key role of ExxonMobil.
(...) As the Union of concerned Scientists explores in their meticulously detailed report, Smoke, Mirrors and Hot Air, and as George Monbiot examines in his powerful global warming book Heat, Exxon’s strategy of using a handful of industry-funded dissenters to cast doubt on an overwhelming scientific consensus was borrowed from the fight over tobacco regulation.

arms and global warming:
But alternative energy research around the world has actually decreased in the past 30 years. According to the International Energy Agency, Japan is the only major developed country that has increased research spending, largely on solar technology. China is adding a new coal-burning power plant every week. In the United States funding for alternative energy research is less than half of what it was in the late 1970s. George W. Bush proposed a 22-percent increase in clean- energy research in his 2006 State of the Union Address. Soon after, in the 2007 budget, energy efficiency funds were cut by 16%.
(...) So what is the world spending its money on? War. Annual world military expenses have risen 34% since 1996. The world spends about $173 per person per year on military expenditures. The UN spends about $3 per person per year for peacekeeping efforts. Military expenses have risen in Russia as its oil revenues have increased, and in China and India as their economies have surged ahead.
(...) The U.S. is responsible for almost half of the world’s total military expenditures, which surpassed $1.1 trillion in 2005. The world is spending slightly less than during the Cold War, in inflation-adjusted dollars, but the U.S. has led the recent new surge in military spending. We spend as much as the next 14 highest-spending countries combined. We spend 29 times as much as the six perceived threats to our country: Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Libya, Sudan and Syria.
(...) President Bush approved a record U.S. defense budget for 2007 - more than $439 billion. This was augmented by an additional $170 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The 2008 budget will further increase defense spending, by a staggering 11% to $481 billion, while adding another $145 billion for war costs. Domestic programs will be increased by 1%.
(...)At present, for every $1 spent on alternative energy research in the United States, $200 is spent on the military. It has been estimated that over 40% of each American citizen’s tax bill goes to war.

on labor and global warming:
"Professionals working for the Environmental Protection Agency are protesting being ordered to sit on the sidelines while we face the greatest environmental challenge of our generation," he stated, noting that the petition began among agency staff. "Under a new Congress, perhaps the scientists at EPA can begin to directly communicate with their true employers - the American public."
(...) Early in 2007, the AFL-CIO weblog published an article headed "Exxon Mobil Secretly Funds Efforts to Deny Global Warming," by Managing Editor Tula Connell. It quotes a new study from the Union of Concerned Scientists revealing that Exxon "gave $16 million to 43 ideological groups between 1998 and 2005 in an effort to mislead the public by discrediting the science behind global warming."
(...) A new poll by Yale University Center for Environmental Law and Policy shows that 83 percent of Americans see global warming as a serious problem and some 70 percent think the government is not doing enough.
(...) [BUT] The union opposition to Kyoto reflects the tendency of the American labor movement to represent narrow sectoral interests, rather than the interests of workers as a whole. It was spearheaded by a coalition of unions called United for Jobs and the Environment. The UJAE describes itself as a "partnership" of unions. It lobbied, and continues to lobby, against the Kyoto agreement and against environmental legislation in the US that it considers unfavorable to labor. While its concern with the possible negative impact that measures to reduce greenhouse gasses might have on the employment of miners and other workers is entirely legitimate, it has made little effort to explore ways that a "just transition" might protect them.