U.S. Leads the World in Per Capita Gasoline Consumption

The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland concluded on Friday, having focused renewed attention on the escalating environmental crisis. The 26th Conference of the Parties known as “COP26” brought together leaders from nearly 200 countries that have signed the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Regular deliberations of the signatories resulted in the landmark 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, which was agreed to at COP21 but appears to be falling well short of its noble goals.

Some of the most compelling speeches at Glasgow came from those demanding climate justice. The underdeveloped nations that are being harmed the most by extreme weather events, prolonged droughts, sea level rise, and ocean acidification are not the ones responsible for the relentless buildup of greenhouse gases in the troposphere. Wealthy, industrialized nations like the United States generate the bulk of global emissions, and our superior resources make us far less vulnerable to the catastrophic harms of climate change. As the crisis continues to escalate, there is growing international awareness about the scope of the injustice and the urgent need for compassion.

These global realities are forcing the United States to grapple with the moral ramifications of our excessive per capita GHG emissions. News reports about the crisis often emphasize the fact that China’s national emissions are higher than ours, and India also gets singled out for its relatively high emissions. These simpleminded, exculpatory comparisons of total national emissions are deliberately misleading. China and India have populations that are roughly four times as large as ours, making our per capita GHG emissions much higher than theirs. According to the World Resources Institute, Australia, the United States, and Canada are the large nations with the highest per capita GHG emissions, more than twice those of the European Union, six times those of China, and thirteen times those of India. The U.S. is also responsible for most of the anthropogenic GHGs that have accumulated since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

Fair-minded comparisons with China and India are particularly sobering when we look at our excessive per capita gasoline consumption. The larger, more powerful passenger vehicles of the United States and Canada are significantly less efficient than those of other nations, and we also enjoy relatively high rates of vehicle ownership and usage. According to estimates by the U.S Energy Information Administration, the United States consumed 9,329,000 barrels of gasoline per day in 2018. China consumed just 3,058,000 barrels per day that same year, despite their much larger population, and India consumed only 647,000 barrels per day. On a per capita basis, our daily gasoline consumption was roughly thirteen times as high as China’s and about 59 times higher than India’s.

The International Energy Agency and the International Council on Clean Transportation studied fuel economy in major car markets between 2005 and 2017 as part of their Global Fuel Economy Initiative. They confirmed that consumer trends favoring larger, more powerful vehicles are undermining efforts by regulatory agencies to improve fuel economy, and that the upsizing trend is especially problematic across North America. If the United States is to honor its moral obligations voiced at Glasgow, we will need to accept responsibility for our excessive tailpipe emissions and make significant changes.