The price of gasoline at the pumps in the Netherlands is currently 1.42 Euros per liter, the equivalent of $7.60 per gallon. The price of gasoline at the pumps in Venezuela is currently 0.097 bolivares fuerte per liter, the equivalent of about $0.16 per gallon.

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Driving: If the price of gasoline in US America rose to $10 per gallon, it would cost $225 to fill the tank of a Ford Explorer. Driving to work 10 miles and back would cost about $13 per day. If one worked an average of 230 days per year, yearly work transportation costs would near $3,000. Being that the average American drives a total of 15,000 miles per year, the money spent on fuel for the SUV would rise to a total of about $8,800 per year. It is estimated that at this rate, the gas bill for the average family would rise from 16 percent of its retail spending to 40 percent.

Air Travel: There are about 11 million commercial flights flown domestically and internationally to and from the USA each year. The planes get an average of about 0.2 miles per gallon of jet fuel at a wholesale cost of just over $1 per gallon. Averaging about 800 miles per flight, all US commercial airlines combined spend about $44 billion per year on fuel alone. If the hypothetical price increase were to proportionally affect jet fuel, commercial airlines would be forced to spend about $140 billion on fuel each year. Historically, fuel expenses account for about 15 percent of airline operation costs. Under the hypothetical price increase, fuel costs would account for 40 percent of operation costs driving the price of air tickets up at least $50 for every $100 in fares. And even with such a price increase, it is predicted that over 1 half of all American airplanes would be grounded as they'd be too costly to fly.

Electricity: As increasing fuel costs push people towards hybrid and electric cars, the demands for electricity would increase at least 2-fold. At current capacity, the US energy grid only supports enough electricity to power 84 percent of the country's automobiles – that is if all gasoline-powered cars were traded in for hybrids. With over 26 percent of the world's known coal reserves residing in the USA, and with no major investments in a sustainable energy grid, agencies would have no choice but to drastically increase coal-fired electricity production.

Food: Eighty years ago, it was rare that American foods ever travelled more than 100 miles from the farm to the consumer. Now it is estimated that the average American meal travels 1500 miles to get from the farm to the plate. Transportation alone is responsible for 8.5 percent of food costs. With gasoline costing $10 per gallon, transportation would account for about 26.5 percent of non-local food costs, and prices would rise more than 25 cents on the dollar. This would result in the resurgence of local, small-scale food production to eliminate the 26.5 percent cost of food transportation.

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If the hypothetical price increase was to come in the form of government taxes at the pumps, even with a 50% drop in consumption by American drivers, then in theory the government could save over $1 trillion per year that could be reinvested in a sustainable transportation infrastructure without increasing the costs of air travel.

China, with over 78,000 kilometers of railroad track, carries 25 percent of the world's total railway workload. It is the primary mode of long distance transportation with over 1.4 billion tickets sold each year at about 1 third the cost of air travel. With a new investment of $292 billion, China plans to extend its railway coverage from 78,000 kilometers to 120,000 kilometers by 2020.

By contrast, Americans only get about 0.56 percent of their total transportation miles by rail. Air travel accounts for 10.61 percent while highway driving accounts for 88.79 percent.


Sources:

Skeel, Shirley. What if Gas Cost $10 a Gallon? MSN Money. May 16, 2008.
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/SaveonaCar/WhatIfGasCost10DollarsAGallon.aspx.

Mouawad, Jad. Lessons on How to Guzzle Less Gas, From Europe and Japan. The New York Times. April, 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/weekinreview/05mouawad.html?_r=1

Schoen, John W. What Does Gasoline Cost in Other Countries? MSNBC. April, 2006.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12452503/

Energy/Fuel. Air Transport Association. July, 2009.
http://www.airlines.org/economics/energy/

2007 Gasoline Consumption. American Fuels. March 8, 2008.
http://www.americanfuels.info/2008/03/2007-gasoline-consumption.html

Boehmer, Jay. 2009 Business Travel Survey: U.S. Airlines Swap Fuel Prices for Demand Crisis. Business Travel News. June 1, 2009.
http://www.btnonline.com/businesstravelnews/headlines/frontpage_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003978712

Summary 2008 Traffic Data for U.S. and Foreign Airlines: Total Passengers Down 3.5 Percent From 2007. Rita Bureau of Transportation. April 23, 2009.
http://www.bts.gov/press_releases/2009/bts019_09/html/bts019_09.html

Rail Transport in the People's Republic of China. Wikipedia. July, 2009
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China

Transportation in the United States. Wikipedia. July, 2009.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_in_the_United_States

Nearly 70 percent of world-wide water consumption goes to agriculture while 20 percent goes to industry and 10 percent to home use.

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At present, 1 in 3 people on the planet are facing water shortages. And it is estimated that by 2030, water demands will grow by 1 fourth. By that year, nearly 50 percent of the world's population will be facing severe water shortages.

The United Nations estimates that it would require an additional $30 billion per year to provide clean and safe drinking water to every human on the planet. In 2007, humans spent more than 3 times that on bottled water. The US Government's $787 billion stimulus package would be enough to provide clean and safe drinking water to all of the planet's human occupants for over 26 years.

It has been proven over and again that buying a small home filtration device for as low as $13 can provide tap water that is as clean and safe, and often cleaner and safer, than bottled water—even those from Fiji and France. Instead, water has been privatized and is now a $400 billion industry, making it the third largest industry behind electricity and oil.

US Americans consumed over 30 billion plastic bottles in 2005. That is close to 1000 per second. Only 12 percent of those petroleum-based bottles are recycled. Nearly 50 million barrels of oil are used by plastic bottle producers each year. That is enough oil to fill 3,200 Olympic-sized swimming pools. One small, inexpensive home filtration device can provide nearly 200 liters of clean, healthy water before the filtration cartridge needs changing. Therefore, using one filtration cartridge can prevent 400 small plastic bottles from entering production.

Tap water from home filtration devices costs nearly 4 cents per liter. A 1-liter bottle of Fiji water costs $3.20. That is a difference of 8,000 percent. The environmental consequences are also quite severe as the Fiji production plant runs on diesel fuel 24 hours a day. The plastic bottles themselves make the nearly 10,000 kilometer journey from China to Fiji before being filled with water and traveling the rest of the way to countries all over the world. In addition, it is estimated that nearly 7 liters of water is contaminated in the production of each 1-liter plastic bottle. And it is calculated that each 1-liter bottles of Fiji purchased in the US is responsible for 1/4 of a kilogram of greenhouse gas emissions.

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The average American food product travels 2,400 kilometers before consumption. That is nearly the distance it would require to have my grandmother in Rochester, New York send some of her delicious vegetable soup to my parents in Denver, Colorado.

Over 17 percent of all energy consumption goes to agriculture, with 1 fourth of that energy going to the production, distribution, and consumption of fertilizer. In addition, US Americans consume nearly 475 million kilograms of petroleum-based pesticides per year. That is close to 1.6 kilos, or one 2-liter soda bottle, per person per year.

US Americans average 20.6 million barrels of oil per day. It is estimated that if all US Americans ate one local-grown, organic meal per day, it would save over 1.1 million barrels of oil daily. At $44.76 per barrel, that could save Americans over $18 billion per year.


Sources:

Kingsolver, Barbara, Camille Kingsolver and Steven L. Hopp. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. New York: Harper Perennial, 2008.

Pollan, Michael. In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. New York: Penguin, 2009.

Flow: For Love of Water. Dir. Irena Salina. The Group Entertainment, 2008.

Getting Off the Bottle. Simple Not Easy. November 23, 2008.
http://suresimple.blogspot.com/2008/11/getting-off-bottle.html.

Herbst, Moira. Water Scarcity: Hidden Risks to Business. Business Week. February 26, 2009.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/feb2009/db20090226_538819.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_news+%2B+analysis

Trees on Tap. Nature Inc. BBC. 2008.
http://www.natureinc.org/trees.htm

Petroleum Basic Statistics. Energy Information Administration. 2007.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html

Fiji Water. Wikipedia. March, 2009.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIJI_Water

According to the United Nations, 852 million people in the world face starvation. That is close to 1 of every 8 people.

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The body mass index (BMI) of a an individual measures the relative percentage of fat and muscle in the body by dividing weight in kilograms by height in meters squared; meaning that since I weigh 62 kilograms and am 1.72 meters tall I have a BMI of 21.0. Normal BMI is between 18.5 and 24.9, overweight is between 25 and 29.9, and Obese is 30 or greater. America leads the world in obesity with 30.6 percent of the population having a body mass index of 30 and over. That means that over 3 of every 10 Americans is clinically obese. In contrast, only 2.6 percent of China's population is obese.

The average American has a BMI of 29.8 while the average Chinese has a BMI of 21.1. The average adult height of a American is 1.694 meters, which means that the average weight is 85.4 kilograms (188.3 pounds). The average adult height of Chinese is 1.641 meters, which means that the average weight is 56.8 kilograms (125.2 pounds). US America's adult population numbers approximately 222,000,000. China's adult population numbers approximately 951,000,000. That means that the America's cumulative adult population weighs 19 billion kilograms (42 billion pounds) while China's cumulative adult population weighs 54 billion kilograms (119 billion pounds).

If Chinese adults weighed as much as American adults, it would add 27 billion kilograms (60 billion pounds) to China's total human body mass. That is greater than the entire weight of the American adult population by 142 percent. If we consider fat and water to be of the same density where 1 kilogram of fat equals 1 liter, then that would mean 27 billion kilograms (60 billion pounds) of fat could fill the coliseum in Rome 1,000 times.

Vice versa, if Americans had a body mass index of 21.1, which would be considered healthy, then American adults would weigh approximately 60.5 kilograms (133 pounds). That would eliminate over 5.5 billion kilograms (12 billion pounds) of human fat from the planet's surface. This year, Sudan will be short 720 million kilograms of food for its starving people. Therefore, America's excess fat alone could fix Sudan's food shortage for over 7.6 years.

America's population with diabetes is 19.5 million, 6.5 percent of the population. China's population with diabetes has grown to over 50 million, 3.8 percent of the population. That number is expected to grow to 100 million by 2025. In the past 10 years, China's childhood obesity rate has doubled. Over 8.1 percent of urban children are obese while only 3.1 percent of rural children are obese. This is still far behind America's childhood obesity rate of 15 percent.

A study by a Cornell University nutritional biochemist named T. Colin Campbell revealed that US Americans consume 10 times more animal protein and 15 grams a day less fiber than the average Chinese. In addition, whereas Chinese only get about 15 percent of their calories from dietary fat, Americans get close to 40 percent. Campbell concludes that if Americans could reduce their calories from fat to 15 percent, they could reduce their risk of developing degenerative diseases like diabetes and cancer before the age of 65 by 80 to 90 percent.

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There are now over 790 McDonald's outlets and 1,200 Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets in China. In 2005, McDonald's opened its first drive though in China. McDonald's plans to open 300 new outlets in the country over the next 3 years, more than half of which will have a drive-thru.


Sources:

Chinese Children Taller and Heavier. Xinhua News Agency. December 31, 2006
http://www.china.org.cn/english/health/194691.htm.

Americans are Heavier Than Ever. Aramark. April, 2007.
http://www.aramark.com/PressReleaseDetailTemplate.aspx?PostingID=854&ChannelID=321.

Human Height. Answers.com. April, 2007.
http://www.answers.com/topic/human-height.

Chinese Body Mass Index Is Much Lower as a Risk Factor for Coronary Artery Disease. American Heart Association, Inc. 2004.
http://www.circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/109/14/e184.

Body Mass Index. Answers.com. April, 2007.
http://www.answers.com/body%20mass%20index.

Rights: Millions of Starving Shame the World, U.N. Says. International Press Service News Agency. April, 2007.
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35166.

Obesity Skyrocketing in China as the Chinese Adopt Western Diets, Lifestyles. News Target. August 18, 2006.
http://www.newstarget.com/020042.html.

Obesity Explosion May Weigh on China's Future. National Geographic News. August 8, 2006.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060808-china-fat.html.

Calculate Your Body Mass Index. National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. April, 2007.
http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/bmi-m.htm.

Chinese Diabetes Population Over 50 Million. International Diabetes Federation. November 9, 2004.
http://www.globalnews.idf.org/2004/11/chinese_diabete.html.

Study: 73M have diabetes or are at risk in U.S. USA Today. May, 2006.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-05-29-diabetes-study_x.htm.

Serious Food Shortages Emerging in Southern Somalia. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United States. April, 2007.
http://www.fao.org/News/GLOBAL/GW9711-e.htm.

Sudan: Food Shortages Spreading Beyond Conflict Areas. Refugees International. 2004.
http://www.refugeesinternational.org/content/article/detail/5134/.

China Studies Link Diet to Disease. Cornell University. Spring, 1995.
http://www.rso.cornell.edu/scitech/archive/95spr/cna.html.

McDonalds Expansion in China. China Business News & Observer. April 17, 2007.
http://cbnando.com/Html/Economic/2007-3/1/170942207.html.

Consumers in China Push Fast Food Expansion. Finance Markets. July 27, 2005.
http://www.financemarkets.co.uk/2005/07/27/consumers-in-china-push-fast-food-expansion/.

North America—USA—Health Statistics. Asia—China—Health Statistics. Health Statistics—Obesity by Country. Nation Master. April, 2007
http://www.nationmaster.com/red/country/us-united-states/hea-health&all=1.
http://www.nationmaster.com/red/country/ch-china/hea-health&all=1.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity.