America's Dependence on Foreign Oil

Question. How many US dollars go towards foreign oil per hour? According to http://www.nrdc.org/air/transportation/aoilpolicy2.asp, $13 million is spent on foreign oil per hour. That's $200,000 per minute! Think about it. That is all of our tax dollars going to fund oil from overseas. For Persian Gulf imports alone, we spend over $25 billion each year on oil. Let's face the cold, hard facts. Americans are dependent on foreign oil. This must change.

Americans use about 12 billion more barrels per year than it finds. This is what sends gas prices through the roof. One solution would be to simply reduse gas emissions. This means keeping our tires properly inflated. Low tire pressure causes our vehicles to spit out more gas. This also means driving more efficiently. When the light turns green, don't floor it; go smooth and easy. Also avoid slamming on the breaks. Let off the gas sooner and just let your speed slowly decrease. This saves the brake pads on your vehicle and will end up saving you money.

Between 1975 and 1987, light truck and passenger car fuel efficiency increased 70 percent. Since then, we have been rolling downhill. The overall mileage of our vehicles have been slowly decreasing. Today, it is at its lowest level in 20 years.

One easy way to ease our dependence on foreign oil is to put soybeans and corn kernels in our gas tank. No, not the actual soybean or kernel itself, but soydiesel and ethanol. Yes, I am talking about biofuels. You may have started seeing them popping up all over the country. By using biofuels, we decrease our dependence on foreign oil and use products that are grown right here in the good ol' US of A. This also helps farmers who have built ethanol and soydiesel processing plants. They were hit harder than you think when gas prices started climbing. But when soydiesel and ethanol started showing up around the country, they had more money than they knew what to do with.

Our country is slowly decreasing our dependence on foreign oil. Maybe someday we will not have to depend on foreign oil at all...