Environmental Engineering Reference
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has nothing to do with increased production of oil and natural gas:
new technologies that cut consumption and pollution are on the rise,
the American automobile is being reborn, and motorists are changing
too. By late 2011, auto sales had rebounded close to their precrisis
pace, but the cars and trucks being sold were dif erent. At er barely
budging for a quarter century, the average fuel economy of a new U.S.
vehicle has risen nearly 15 percent in the last i ve years. 5 Hybrids made
up a mere one in two hundred vehicles sold in 2004; by 2011, they
accounted for one in twenty-i ve sales. 6
Moreover, when Americans fuel up, they're increasingly put ing
something other than gasoline or diesel in their tanks. Annual U.S.
consumption of ethanol, mostly made from grain, crossed the ten bil-
lion gallon mark in 2009, and by 2010 ethanol made up a tenth of
all gasoline sold in the United States. Americans are driving less too,
racking up fewer miles in 2011 than in 2010, the i rst drop outside a
recession in at least twenty-i ve years.
With cars and trucks responsible for more than two-thirds of U.S. oil
consumption, the combined impact of all these shit s has been power-
ful. Oil consumption within the United States once looked as if it would
rise forever, but between 2007 and 2011 it fell by nearly 10 percent. 7 In
the i ve years ending in 2011, U.S. oil consumption fell by three times as
much as U.S. production rose. 8 h ese shit s could be chalked up in part
to the economic recession that began in 2007, but alone the recession
couldn't come close to explaining the strong and steady declines.
Indeed, independent analysts project that fuel consumption could
continue to dive over the coming decade. 9 Combined with rising U.S.
oil production, this is making the prospect that the United States will
stop importing oil from outside North America more realistic than it
has been in forty years. It promises to put a big dent in greenhouse gas
emissions at the same time.
But not everyone is so optimistic about the numbers, and many
aren't particularly thrilled about what they mean. People are i ghting
over whether curbing consumption or boosting production is the right
route to economic strength and increased security. h ose who want to
use government to make people burn less fuel face at acks for med-
dling in the economy and increasing costs for consumers. Skeptics warn
 
 
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