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TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2001

"We are the Oil Tribe, and the defining ritual of our civilization, the act all of us have in common, is not Monday Night Football or church on Sunday, but buying a tank of gasoline. It happens 150 million times each week.

Our petroleum appetite is prodigious. An average American drives 1,000 miles a month, the distance to the moon every 20 years. A typical baby boomer will drive and fly more than a million miles in his or her lifetime, equal to 40 orbits around the planet. Per capita, we Americans now consume about 150 pounds of oil each week. Oil is our lifeblood.

Yet how can petroleum matter so much and mean so little? We don’t seem to care that oil won’t be ours for the taking forever. . ."

Get the Story:
Guest Opinion: Prudhoe Bay oil field nears end of life (Randy Udall. The Billings Gazette 11/6)