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If some aspiring PhD candidate needs a worthy topic, here's a suggestion: American land-use patterns and their contribution to global terrorism.
In 1960, the average American commute to work was five miles one way. By 1980, it had stretched to 12 miles. In 2005, it was 16 miles. About 88 percent of Americans drive to and from work.
These numbers offer a start on some back-of-an-envelope calculations. The civilian labor force comprised 69.6 million Americans in 1960, and 149.2 million in 2005. Estimate the average commuting car got 15 miles per gallon in 1960, and a generous 30 mpg in 2005 (generous because Ford Expeditions seem to be a lot more popular than Ford Escorts) .
Work the numbers, and you get 1.8 billion gallons of gasoline burned for commuting to and from jobs in 1960, and in 2005, 35 billion gallons, nearly 20 times as much.
So for 45 years the population and workforce grew, and people moved farther from their workplaces. They also moved farther from stores, churches and schools, and in the process, built an economy and a society utterly dependent on the automobile and gasoline.
On an average day in January of this year, America imported 1,479,000 barrels of crude oil from Saudi Arabia, about 14 percent of total imports.
If crude oil sells for $100 a barrel, how much of that
goes to Saudi Arabia? The price we generally see is the New
York Mercantile Exchange rate for a barrel of West Texas
Intermediate Crude delivered to Cushing, Okla., which has
extensive pipeline connections to seaports and refineries.
Saudi Oil follows the OPEC basket price
, which is a
little lower on account of more sulfur in the oil, which
makes it more expensive to refine. And you have to reckon
on transportation costs.
As nearly as I can figure, every we inject about $103 million of profit into the Saudi economy every day -- about $20 million of this from Americans just routinely commuting.
Where does this $500 million a year go? Stuart A. Levey,
is undersecretary of the U.S. Treasury for terrorism and
financial assistance. He testified before a U.S. Senate
committee last week, and said that Saudi Arabia today
remains the location where more money is going to
terrorists, to Sunni terror groups and to the Taliban, than
any other place in the world,
he said.
It would seem reasonable that if we're going to fight terrorists and the Taliban, we could start by not giving them money.
But even if we perfected domestic switchgrass ethanol or some other pipe dream, there would remain the need to build, expand and maintain roads and to supply parking. Nor is it of much help to complain about last year's $123 billion in oil profits. The oil companies were doing what companies are supposed to do -- make money for their stockholders.
We need to look at ways to rebuild our constructed
landscape to reduce the need to commute, to change our
zoning laws so that corner stores return, to make driving
less necessary and walking and cycling easier, and to
ignore oil-apologist propaganda about social
engineering
-- remote big boxes, distant mega-malls and
sterile cul-de-sac residential impoundments are also a form
of social engineering.
This could not be done overnight, of course, but we
could start reconstructing our auto-dominated landscape. Or
we could continue to finance the terrorists while
supposedly fighting a war on terror.
*******
Last Sunday, I erred in writing that the 20th Amendment
gave women the vote in all states. Actually it was the
19th. I blame wretched handwriting, as the XIX
in my
notes looked like XX.
Fourth-graders, you should pay
better attention in penmanship class than I did.
********
At 7 p.m. on Friday, April 11, Tom Noel (a/k/a Dr.
Colorado) and I will debate Who Needs Denver?
at the
Salida Steam Plant Theater. Tickets are $10 at the door;
it's a fund-raiser for Historic Salida, Inc.
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