Executive Offices Show submenu for “Executive Offices””.Administration Show submenu for “Administration””.At the end of 2015 he retired from Vanderbilt, where he is now Dean-and-Professor Emeritus. Hall was formerly Vice Provost for Research, Dean of the Graduate School, Professor of Physics and Professor of Electrical Engineering at Vanderbilt University. Something to keep in mind when shopping in the soft-drink aisle or filling the gas tank.ĭennis G.
We’ve been chugging along at that rate for decades. Our personal dependence on oil is complicated yet easy to quantify: about two liters per day per person worldwide, almost ten in the U.S. That translates into on average just over 9 pounds of CO2 per day per person worldwide and roughly 42 pounds per day per person in the U.S., nearly half of which takes up residence in our thin, shared atmosphere for hundreds of years. Petroleum products are responsible for a third of human-caused global CO2 emissions and 45% of U.S. Nearly 96% of the world’s population live outside the United States, so we shouldn’t be surprised when world events affect us locally. The prices of oilbased products like gasoline are again on the rise both here and abroad. The world’s third-largest oil producer, Russia, invaded Ukraine just as we’re trying to emerge from a pandemic slowdown. Almost 50 years later, oil remains center-stage Hear more Tennessee Voices: Get the weekly opinion newsletter for insightful and thought provoking columns. The resulting Arab Oil Embargo increased the pump price of gasoline throughout the U.S. I was a graduate student in the early 1970s when Egypt and Syria led several Arab states to attack Israel just as the Watergate scandal was heating up here at home. Both oil and evolution have been tangled up in politics ever since. The modern oil industry is said to have started in 1859 with the opening of Edwin Drake’s well near Titusville, Pennsylvania, the same year Charles Darwin published his groundbreaking treatise On the Origin of Species. Petroleum’s rich history dates back thousands of years. Even though it’s common to refer casually to “oil consumption,” there’s more in the mix than crude oil.įor example, on average in 2021, roughly one million barrels per day of renewable biofuels were included in the tally of that year’s nearly 20 million barrels per day of U.S. What might surprise some is that those products are made not only from crude oil but also from biofuels, natural-gas liquids, and other ingredients. Energy Information Administration and the International Energy Agency measure consumption as the amount of petroleum products supplied to purchasers, who then consume that gasoline, jet fuel, heating oil, etc.
The average American family of three accounts for 14.4 of those two-liter soft-drink bottles of petroleum products per day.īoth the U.S. Our 330 million people consume daily about 20 million barrels, so our average national rate works out to be 9.6 liters per day per person, almost 5 times the global rate. with just over 4% of the world’s population accounts for 20% of global petroleum use. As with all averages, some consume more, some less Hear from Tennessee's Black voices: Get the weekly newsletter for powerful and critical thinking columns. As the world’s population has grown, production has increased to meet demand. If you multiply the first three numbers together and then divide by the fourth, the result is about 2 liters per day per person, just over a half-gallon.Ģ0 years ago, the result would have been much the same. The world consumes daily approximately 100 million barrels of petroleum products, each barrel holds 42 gallons, there are 3.785 liters in a gallon and the world population is some 7.9 billion. Every day, each person on Earth accounts for roughly one of those big soft-drink bottles filled with petroleum products. It turns out the average worldwide oil consumption is about two liters per day per person. Years ago, I came upon an appealing way to picture the scale of my personal use of oil. You’re probably wondering, “Who doesn’t like a root-beer float, but what does that have to do with oil?” Because I enjoy a root-beer float now and then, I keep a two-liter bottle of A&W root beer on hand in our refrigerator.
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