California Uses More Gasoline than Any Country in the World
July 23, 2008 · Print This Article
California has a reputation for being one of the greenest states in America, environmentally speaking. We hear so much about their progressive laws and programs, and how people there are on the frontlines of the fight against global warming. And yet, somehow, they manage to be huge resource hoggers. California alone uses more gasoline than any country in the world (aside from the US as a whole). Even China.
From Wired:
That’s according to the California Energy Commission’s State Alternative Fuels Plan, which was posted online last Christmas Eve (pdf). The whole report makes for some fascinating reading because it’s a blueprint for a low-carbon and renewable transportation fuel future. The dominant takeaway: it ain’t going to be easy.
One more choice statistic: gasoline usage in California has increased 50 percent, that’s 10 6.7 billion gallons, since 1988. Has there been anything close to a commensurate increase in quality of life here to accompany that rise in energy use?
Of course, China will quickly catch up and their consumption rate will far exceed California’s – and it won’t be too long before that happens. Still, though – that’s a lot of gas, even for a large populous state.
If you’re a Californian, what’s your take on this? Poor public transportation, too many people on the road, and lots or sprawl?
Link [Wired]
Photo credit: Flickr user respres
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This is one of my favorite soap boxes but I’ll try not to get too preachy. So the basic problems I see in California (in regards to this issue anyway) are lots of space, bad infra-structure, and horrible community planning.
So how is too much space a bad thing? Well with soo much land people can live pretty much wherever they want. From beach front property to ski resort villas, and everywhere in between. The downside it that given the choice people tend to spread out. So grandparents live in the Bay Area, Uncle Bob lives in the valley. Aunt Susan lives in the foot hills and everyone drives a hundred miles for Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, and you name it day. Not to mention all the people who lets say work in the bay area but cannot afford to live there so the live in the valley and commute 60 or 70 mile every day! It’s totally nuts!
Which brings me to the infrastructure. Or more precisely the lack of infrastructure. What makes all the long distance commuting bad is that everyone is driving their own perpetual explosion machines. Very few people carpool or take public transit. Why would they? The public transit system from city to city is almost non-existent. Lets look at trains. We have Amtrak which rents tracks from freight companies like Southern Pacific so when Amtrak is running a few minutes late and the train gets to a junction, they have to wait for the freight train that is using the same track and has right of way because they own the track. Its no wonder Amtrak is infamously behind schedule and very few people use it to commute. People just can’t afford to be late to work that often. So what else do we have, buses? Sure they are a bit more reliable but they’re not nearly as comfortable as a train, even Amtrak trains that rattle their way down freight tracks. So everyone drives and if you going to drive you might as well take your own car. I mean what if you need to stop at the store and your carpool buddy needs to get home to take his kids to soccer practice.
This brings me to my third issue with Califorina’s gas consumption. Why do you need to drive to the store or to soccer practice. Shouldn’t both of those things be within walking distance of home? Most Californian cities are horrible in this regard. There seems to be no planning whatsoever. Houses go over here. Shopping over there and schools and parks here and there wherever we can fit them in. Track housing, the suburbs, bedroom communities, whatever you call it its still ridiculous. If the concept of having miles and miles of housing with no stores on one side of town and “the mall” with all stores and no housing on the other side of town doesn’t sound ludicrous to you there is something wrong with your brain meats .
Pant pant pant, whew! So there are my top three concerns regarding Californians driving too much. I’ll get down from the soapbox now.
California might be known as a “green” state but they are still the most populated state with a lot of cars. As we see in the US on the whole, its a slow process to lower carbon emissions. It is surprising that China doesn’t use more gasoline. However, the area california is strongest in is its business innovation. Many great companies are sprouting up that benefit the individual and the environment. For example, I came across a website http://www.simplestop.net that stops your junk mail and benefits the environment. In this regard, california is far beyond other countries.
California is one of the most energy-backward places on the planet. They pride themselves in having marginally less energy consumption per capita and “cleaner” energy production. Except that they consume less energy because all their businesses moved to places with better taxes and energy prices, and they import a huge amount of energy from coal plants in nevada and wyoming! In fact, their energy policy is so retarded that in the 1980s they decided that they no longer needed new power plants, and landed with expensive energy imports and rolling black outs 20 years later.
This is just one of many hilarious criticisms of California’s energy policies.
As a Californian, yes, I am a little ashamed that we seem to be gas hoggers. However, in my experience, it seems like there is a lack of public transportation and too much sprawl in certain places. These are no excuses and we should definitely work toward fixes this problem. I came from San Diego and since it is so widely spread out it is hard to say, “Hey, I am going to bike from Rancho Bernardo to La Jolla or from downtown to Chula Vista.” I also moved to Santa Barbara and it seems like we are definitely more environmentally conscious than other surrounding citiies. Still, our public transportation needs work, as I see many co-workers commuting from Ventura (45 min.) to inner Santa Barbara, because there are no trains, etc.
Santa Barbara is pretty good though, and many co-workers get together to carpool and even ask around when traveling to LA for the weekend, in case they can carpool with another person. I find that Santa Barbara is very good about buses (as they are environmentally friendly) and bikes (it is a small city so many people bike ride). As we speak, my company is organizing our annual team for the Commuter Challenge (where people ride, walk, carpool, take the bus to work). I also try to brand California and Santa Barbara as working toward being more “green” at my blog: http://www.greenfixes.com. There are CALIFORNIANS who care about the environment and try to make the most effort to reduce their carbon output. I just don’t want people to brand Californians as not caring about the environment….we are making an effort and at least working toward some goal. What that future may be will only be told in time, but at least great bloggers can discuss this and debate.