How you will feel at the end and beginning of this post, respectively. (Photo by loresjoberg.)
Presenting: New data about fossil fuel consumption from the Worldwatch Institute, in decreasing order of how good the news is.
- Oil consumption in the European Union dropped by 2.8 percent in 2011!
- Oil consumption in the United States dropped by 1.8 percent in 2011!
- Oil consumption increased by .7 percent globally last year — less than the 3.3 percent increase in 2010.
- But a lot more than the 1.3 percent decline in 2009.
- Oil consumption is at an all-time high of 88.03 million barrels per day.
- In part because consumption went up 5.5 percent in China.
- And 5.7 percent in Russia.
- And production is up for the second year in a row, growing 1.3 percent in 2011.
- Oil production grew more slowly than production of natural gas, which grew 3.1 percent.
- And much, much more slowly than coal production, which grew 6.1 percent.
You can read more here. The plus side: It doesn’t get worse.
