definitely a constructive thought
Kirk
I really do not care what your personal political agenda may be. It is none of my business, and this is not a political forum. However, oil and war is not much of a political bombshell. They go together like bread and butter. The current situation in Iraq, in the view of many, is another war for oil. Others feel differently. You are entitled to your own view, be it left, right, or merely confused as to where left and right ran off to. The media can do that to a person.
The fact remains that we have seen war for oil, money, land, you name it. Today I want to pick on oil.
Even if you feel that our place in Iraq has nothing whatsoever in the slightest to do with oil, you would probably admit that saving our natural resources is a decent idea. Oil
is not self-replenishing, now is it? Are there any dinosaurs left that I do not know about? Good. I was just making sure Jurassic Park was indeed a work of fiction.
I realize there are some who believe that oil is not a fossil fuel. However, I am running with the majority of geologists on this one, as well as on the assumption that if the minority are wrong, we are history. It seems a safe place to play.
What if I told you that we could reduce our imported crude oil by twenty percent per year without so much as a political sanction or the ride your bike more often approach?
You have heard the phrase, shedding blood for oil, right? Well, here is my new agenda: shedding fat for oil.
I am not suggesting body fat as an alternative fuel source, although it would give the liposuction clinics and interesting selling spin. I am referring to the simple matter of weight. Not the weight of our cars, although a
billion Hummers is probably not a wise idea, but rather the weight of those driving them. Those riding in the front and back seat. The people who pay the loans and sell the Hummers.
I am talking about you, and that guy I see in the mirror every morning.
And, I am talking about a measly ten pounds.
If every American who needed to drop ten pounds of useless fat did so, we would completely cease the need for importing oil from the Middle East.
I am not joking.
This is not a rant on the Middle East, but rather a step in the right direction to a more environmentally-friendly world.
Is that claim rather hard to believe? Good! Get your calculators out and prepare for a fun lesson in mathematical accountability. For all of you who believe we are at war for oil and who know they can shed ten pounds of unwanted fat, I have a great way for you to protest our involvement: drop that fat like a bad habit.
For all of you who do not believe oil has anything to do with Iraq, you are not off the hook.
Do you think we will be using more or less oil in the next twenty years? Unless we adopt an alternative source of fuel very quickly, we will be even more reliant upon importing fuel from nations that contradict democratic values.
Here we go. Feel free to check my sources and my math.
- Every 100 pounds of weight in your vehicle increases your miles per gallon of gasoline by two percent. (1) This means that dropping ten pounds would create a .2% surplus of miles per gallon per person in your vehicle.
- An estimated sixty-five percent of adults twenty years old and older living in the United States are either overweight or obese. This is defined as having a BMI (Body Mass Index) rating of 25 or higher. Even worse, two percent of the population are morbidly obese (more than 100 pounds overweight); a rate that has quadrupled over the past twenty-five years. (2)
- By age fifty-five, the average American has added nearly forty pounds of fat during the course of adulthood. (3)
- The United States, with five percent of the worlds population, consumes forty-five percent of the gasoline produced on earth. (4) Forty-four percent of gasoline production comes from crude oil. (5)
- The average driver clocks 12,000 miles per year and uses 462 gallons of gasoline. The average MPG (miles per gallon) is 26. (6)
So, what does all that mean to you and me?
If you do the math, you will find that for every ten pounds of weight you decide to shed, you will end up increasing your miles per gallon of gas by a tad under half a gallon. Doesnt sound like much, does it? Well, lets continue
Knowing how far we drive in a year, that savings would decrease the amount of gas used in that year from an average of 462 gallons to 444 gallons to travel the exact same distance. The
savings? Over 18 gallons of gas in a year and $40 for every driver.
So what, right? Wrong.
We know that sixty-five percent of Americans are technically overweight. But did you know that seventy-six percent of all Americans should discard ten pounds of fat in order to become more healthy? (7)
This number comes to a whopping 200,000,000 Americans. Thats how many should discard ten pounds of fat.
In so doing, we would cut our gasoline consumption by 3,600,000,000 gallons per year and save over $8 billion. Putting that into perspective: The United States consumes 320,000,000 gallons of gas per day, so we just earned 11.25 days of free gas just by ditching ten pounds of unwanted fat. Twenty-five pounds, as you will see is a far more realistic number, would give us a month of free gas.
Now, the oil connection. Eighteen gallons of gas equals ninety-two percent of a 42-gallon standardized barrel of oil. (8) Our
puny ten pound fat loss saved us a staggering 184,000,000 barrels of oil as a nation.
The Middle East in its entirety is responsible for nineteen percent of our imported oil. This comes to about 2,000,000 barrels per day. (9) So, discarding ten pounds of fat would result in almost three months of zero-dollar oil purchases from the Middle East.
It does not have to be the Middle East. I am not trying to pick on them
in fact, just the opposite. It could be Canada, Mexico, or right here in Texas. The point is our fat is causing our oil needs to soar and our environment suffer.
If that is not sobering enough, there is more. Remember that forty pounds of fat the average American gains from the age of twenty to fifty-five? That segment of our population accounts for forty-two percent of the U.S. population, or roughly 125,000,000 people. (10) That means five billion pounds of unwanted fat, or about 500,000,000 barrels of
oil.
So, thats 250 of the 365 days of Middle East oil obliterated. Without sanction. Without peddling your cars. Without war.
Toss in the added twelve pounds of fat gained on average from the age of from fifty-five to seventy, plus the rampant obesity of our children (11), and you have this conclusion: our body fat is directly responsible for over twenty percent of the oil we consume.
This is more oil than we import from Kuwait, Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia combined. This is also equivalent to more money than we spend on cancer research, AIDS research, and all medical research in an entire year. (12)
Are you getting the picture?
Are you ready to shed fat for oil? How about for cancer then? For AIDS research? For our economy as a whole? Our health care system?
This is considerably larger than how you look in the mirror. We have a world and our own individual beliefs to consider when we look at the
320% increase in childhood obesity since 1935, and the 200% increase in adult obesity in the past 30 years
that is, if we do nothing about it.
Ironically, these figures are very close to the increase in
you guessed it
oil demand.
Could it be that our appetite for food is causing an appetite for
. (you can fill-in-the-blank.) All I know is this: it is ironic that our personal fuel is in a state of growth while, in most peoples view, our earthly fuel is quite the opposite. Two fuel sources; and both more related than we have imagined.
Let us all shed fat for oil. Shed fat for the economy if not the oil. Just shed it! Do it for yourself, and yes for the sake of our country and our environment.
Who cares if this is idealistic? So was America a few hundred years ago.
- Energy Information Administration, Washington, DC
- Center for Disease Control Report, 2004
- American Accreditation Health Care Commission Report, 2005
- Energy Information Administration, Washington, DC
- Energy Information Administration, Washington, DC
- American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy
- US Department of Health Report, 2004
- US Department of Energy
- Energy Information Administration, Washington, DC
- Social Science Data Analysis Network
- Metabolism; June 2005
- National Institute of Health report; 2005
Jon Benson
Creator/Co-Author of Fit Over 40: Role Models For Excellence At Any Age
Creator/Co-Author of Fit Over 40: Role Models For Excellence At Any Age
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