Last week’s Five Friday Facts came courtesy of Lester Brown’s Plan B 4.0, which was published in 2009. The following facts come from the same chapter, “Population Pressure: Land and Water” as last week’s. The book is available in print or as a downloadable PDF from The Earth Policy Institute’s website. For previous Five Friday Facts from Plan B 4.0, click here.
- In China an average of 600 square miles turned to desert each year from 1950 to 1975. By century’s end, nearly 1,400 square miles (3,600 square kilometers) were going to desert annually.
- It takes 14 tons of water to produce one ton of steel, where as 1,000 tons are required to grow 1 ton of wheat.
- In 2009 roughly one-fourth of the US grain harvest was to be converted into fuel for cars. In Europe, some 2.1 billion gallons of biodiesel was expected to be produced in the same time frame. In order to meet quotas, the European Union is increasingly turning to palm oil imported from Indonesia and Malaysia, which depend on clearing rainforests for oil palm plantations.
- The grain required to fill and SUV’s 25-gallon tank with ethanol just once will feed one person for a whole year. If the entire US grain harvest were to be converted to ethanol, it would satisfy at most 18 percent of US automotive fuel needs.
- The (May 2009) decision to raise US auto fuel efficiency standards 40 percent by 2016 will reduce dependence on oil far more than converting the country’s entire grain harvest to ethanol could.
Image source: Metropolitan Museum of Art
