Refrigerators, lamps, air conditioners and pulp and paper plants have all become far more energy efficient. The most important exception to this trend is in transportation. While fuel mileage in cars continues to improve, the fuel efficiency of U.S. automobiles has actually declined since the mid-1990s. That's because many drivers have switched from ordinary cars to light trucks or so-called sport utility vehicles. Between 1980 and 1998, U.S. petroleum consumption hardly increased at all, from 34.2 quadrillion Btus to 37.39 quadrillion Btus.
Coal supplies a greater share of U.S. power.
One of the hot-button issues in energy policy is whether to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Whatever the merits of this plan environmentally, the case remains that just slight increases in automobile fuel efficiency would conserve far more oil than the U.S. could ever hope to extract from the Alaskan preserve. No amount of drilling in Alaska or anywhere else is likely to have any impact on the crisis in California, a product not of fuel shortages but of a half-baked attempt at deregulation. Almost none of the electricity in California is produced by oil, Byrne notes. The objective evidence is just against it.