The United States and Canada have been largely dependent on oil when it comes to fuel. Though this dependence has not been without consequences and the two countries have become known for their excessive oil consumption in North America. The amount of oil consumed and whether this amount is sustainable or not is an important environmental and economic issue.

The petroleum industry is an important force in the economies of the United States and Canada and provides jobs for millions of people in the form of oil drilling and production, refining, distribution, and retail. Oil consumption also helps fuel the machinery that powers the agricultural, manufacturing, services, transportation, and other sectors of these economies.

Despite its economic benefits, excessive oil consumption in North America has also had numerous environmental and social impacts. Burning fossil fuels emits carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming and air pollution. Additionally, oil spills can cause extensive damage to marine ecosystems.

Oil consumption in the US and Canada has increased in recent years. The US alone consumed over 19 million barrels per day in 2020. This amount of consumption is unsustainable considering the amount of oil reserves that are available. The US is estimated to have over 150 billion barrels of total oil reserves, but this number is likely to decrease in the future as demand increases and reserves become increasingly difficult to access.

Another problem with excessive oil consumption in North America is that it contributes to a reliance on imported oil. This can be a costly endeavor, as it increases the US’s dependence on foreign sources. This reliance can then compound the environmental and social problems associated with oil consumption and lead to additional environmental and economic concerns.

For these reasons, it is important to consider alternatives and strategies for reducing excessive oil consumption in North America. Efforts can be taken to reduce transportation-related oil consumption by investing in efficient public transportation systems or electric vehicles, and promoting the use of renewable energy sources instead of petroleum-based fuels. Additionally, policies and regulations can help to ensure that the benefits of the petroleum industry outweigh the costs.

It is also important to remember that oil consumption has economic and social benefits in addition to environmental risks. Many people’s livelihoods depend on the economy of the petroleum industry and sales of oil products generate revenue for governments. Therefore, it is critical to find a balance between the economic and environmental goals when tackling the issue of excessive oil consumption in North America.

Oil consumption is one of the major environmental issues of today. Our economy and modern society are deeply reliant on oil and other related energy sources for various purposes, from transportation to heating and so on. However, when oil is consumed in excessive amounts beyond certain limits, it can lead to serious consequences for the environment and our long-term sustainability.

The main causes of excessive oil consumption are mainly associated with human activity, such as increased fossil fuel consumption for transportation and industrial purposes. Fossil fuel burning is the main contributor to air pollution and its emissions are the leading cause of climate change. Furthermore, excessive oil consumption also leads to an overdependence on natural resources, which, if done unwisely, can leave us vulnerable to shortages in the near future. Additionally, pollution from oil consumption can contribute to water and soil contamination, and can damage biodiversity and ecosystems.

There are some solutions available to help solve the issue of excessive oil consumption. To begin, governments need to create policies, laws, and regulations that discourage the use of excessive oil and promote efficient energy consumption. This could include stricter fuel economy standards, incentives for people to switch to alternative energy sources, and bans on certain forms of fossil fuel burning. Furthermore, public awareness needs to be raised on the issue, specifically on how to reduce oil consumption and thus its negative environmental impacts. Furthermore, research and development of clean energy sources, such as wind and solar power, needs to be accelerated in order to further reduce our reliance on oil.

Another potential solution to the problem is to shift away from our traditional, linear economy model and to a circular one that can reduce our need for oil. For instance, by introducing the concept of a “circular economy”, where we place a greater emphasis on repair, reuse, and recycling, we can reduce our reliance on oil and other resources as well as lower emissions. In addition, companies and other stakeholders should work together to focus on developing more efficient energy technologies that are both cost-effective and can help reduce our reliance on oil significantly.

Ultimately, the key to reducing excessive oil consumption is to look towards the future and create more sustainable systems and policies that will address this issue. This means investing in clean and renewable energy sources, educating the public on the importance of sustainable energy sources, and shifting away from our traditional, linear economy model to a more efficient, circular one. Only with a collective effort and commitment to sustainable solutions can we ultimately reduce our reliance on oil and ensure a healthier environment and a more secure

Alcoholism is a complex and serious disorder that affects millions of individuals, families, and communities in the United States each year. It is characterized by compulsive drinking, a lack of control over alcohol consumption, physical dependence, and a host of social and psychological implications. While overcoming alcoholism is extremely difficult, it is possible to do so with perseverance, dedication, and appropriate treatments. In this article, we will discuss the various implications of alcoholism and how those who are struggling with this disorder can work to improve their situation.

The physical implications of alcoholism can be severe and life-threatening. Those who suffer are at risk for a host of physical ailments, including liver disease, stroke, anemia, pancreatitis, coronary heart disease, and many others. In addition, alcohol abuse can lead to long-term damage to the brain and nervous system, potentially compromising cognitive functioning and mental health. Heavy drinkers can also suffer from beer potomania, or the development of severe potassium deficiency due to a lack of vital nutrients in the body. Lastly, those who struggle with alcohol addiction are more likely to be involved in injuries or death due to risky behavior, including driving while intoxicated.

The psychological implications of alcoholism vary greatly, but can still be incredibly impactful. Those who struggle with alcohol addiction may experience intense mood swings, depression, anxiety, and drastically altered decision-making. Over time, alcohol abuse can lead to a breakdown of work performance or personal/interpersonal relationships. Additionally, those with alcoholism often struggle with maintaining healthy boundaries, leading to co-dependency or enabling behavior in their loved ones.

The social implications of alcoholism are also very real and encompass both bad and good effects. Those who suffer from alcoholism may experience poor leadership abilities, absenteeism at work, and general alienation from family and friends. Conversely, some individuals who find sobriety are able to become more involved in their communities, as well as more productive on the job.

Despite these very real implications, those struggling with alcoholism can find strategies to help cope with their addiction. Seeking out those who are in recovery, including Alcoholics Anonymous, can provide the much-needed support and understanding. Nutritional advice, establishing a healthy schedule, exercising regularly, and engaging in hobby activities can also support those trying to manage their disorder. Finally, participating in counseling or psychotherapy can provide essential insight and assistance to those struggling to control their drinking.

Overcoming alcoholism is hard and requires a significant commitment. Those who are struggling with this disorder need to be aware of the very real implications alcohol can have on their physical, psychological, and social health. By understanding the seriousness of their condition and developing strategies to cope with their addiction, those who suffer from alcoholism can begin to make positive changes. With dedication and patience, it is possible to manage alcoholism and improve one’s quality of life.

Oil is a necessary part of everyday life for North Americans. We rely on it for transportation, heating and cooling our homes, fueling our businesses, and providing essential materials for the global economy. But this reliance on oil has become an obsession, driving countries to consume more than is sustainable and putting communities at risk.

At the root of this obsession with oil is the perception that it is an abundant, cheap and essential commodity that provides a steady supply of energy for North Americans. This attitude has encouraged companies and countries to continually seek out new sources of oil and to deregulate the fossil fuel industry, creating a dangerous situation with serious environmental and health impacts.

The consequences of this oil obsession have been devastating. In order to meet demand, energy companies have started to move towards more extreme means of extracting oil, including unconventional oil sources like tar sands and fracking. These techniques result in increased emissions of greenhouse gases and release a range of toxins into the environment, endangering water supplies and ecosystems. There have also been multiple oil spills in North American waters, most notably in the Gulf of Mexico, causing environmental devastation that will be felt for generations.

Air pollution from the burning of oil has caused an increase in respiratory illnesses, particularly in lower-income communities who tend to face the brunt of the impacts from the oil industry. At the same time, oil companies are profiting tremendously from the North American obsession with oil, with a few companies dominating the market and reaping the commercial rewards of their monopoly over this essential resource.

Ultimately, our obsession with oil has put us on an unsustainable path that threatens our health and environment, while doing nothing to make us energy independent. Rather than investing in renewable forms of energy and carbon-reduction initiatives, governments are pandering to the fossil fuel industry, locking us into an energy path that only serves to line the pockets of the few.

The long-term impact of this oil obsession is increasingly clear. We need to break away from our dependency on oil and find a path towards a sustainable and equitable energy economy. Investment in renewable sources of energy, the proliferation of green jobs, and increased public-private partnerships in order to build a better future for North America should be a priority. We must put an end to our oil obsession before it’s too late.

How much driving is too much? How many hours, or how far is it safe to drive in one day? Though the true answer is extremely subjective, as some drivers can easily tolerate longer drives, while others are fatigued by the rigours of such trips, it is fair to assume objectively that most people drive too much – especially as they could be travelling in a more active and environmentally-friendly manner.

We are currently (pardon the atrocious pun) a rather driven society; as ever more people move into large cities and join the urban workforce, commute times are stretching due to poor and outdated roadways. Research shows that spending more than 2 hours on the road every day greatly influences to the driver’s health. An Australian study of nearly 40,000 people compared daily schedules and a handful of health factors and determined that, compared to non-drivers, those who spent 2 or more hours driving were nearly twice as likely to sleep poorly and over 75% more likely to be obese; regular drivers were also reported as over 40% more likely to rate their quality of life as poor and a third more likely to feel psychologically distressed; furthermore, they were more likely to smoke and to fall below the recommended level of weekly exercise.

It is clear that sitting continuously for hours at a time is bad for one’s health; additionally, such sedentary behaviour can be harmful to the brain as it can be less active after several hours at the wheel and given that the stress and fatigue can cause cognitive declines over time as we must constantly monitor our own vehicle and surroundings, but also be alert for hazards and obstacles in our path. Therefore, doing a checkup on your mental health is sometimes the best option to discover your mental health condition.

In addition to the physical stresses of sitting for long periods of time, and dealing with obstacles and other drivers, in our increasingly over-scheduled and hectic lives, we cannot afford idle time; and commute times are as good as wasted. Unless the driver is, as is far too common, multitasking at the wheel, leading to distracted drivers. Thankfully, many states are drafting laws to prevent distracted driving, such as the requirement for hands-free mobile phone use.

Another danger of excessive driving is from the harmful emissions and greenhouse gasses; while the latter impacts the environment and climate, the former can have a detrimental effect on the driver as well who is breathing in hundreds of gallons of pollution-laden air during their hour-long trips to and from their workplaces.

In the face of a looming global oil crisis, and given the effects of fossil fuel consumption on the environment, it falls to us to change our ways and develop alternative modes of transportation. We can certainly look toward the future and the latest scientific developments for new transportation methods; however, we can also look to the past – many so-called archaic modes of transportation would be perfectly acceptable in current times.

Of course, the easiest course is to walk whenever possible, or to use any other mode of active transportation: jogging, cycling, in-line skating, skateboarding or even skiing and snowshoeing in more northerly areas. Public transportation is an excellent alternative to driving private vehicles and many cities offer bus, subway, or light-rail in addition to ride-shares and taxis.

As more and more people move into city centres, it behoves us to establish more efficient means of moving people through heavily populated areas while minimizing traffic congestion and environmental impact. While converting to hybrid or electric cars will reduce the negative effects on the planet, a multi-passenger approach would be best to reduce the strain on roadways and shorten commute times for all. In cities originally designed for horse-powered travel, or car travel, development is limited by the city footprint; therefore, the best way to add new commuter systems to an existing infrastructure is to either tunnel below the city – adding subway tunnels or – or, following the lead of many European and Asian countries, expand skyward: monorails can be used for short travel on loops, urban cable systems (aerial cable cars similar to a ski lift) can be installed in business sectors, and personal rapid transit tracks allow small automated vehicles or pods to transport passengers along a guideway. For longer trips, to replace short-hop commuter flights, forward thinkers such as Elon Musk are developed Hyperloop systems where commuters would travel in pods through a network of high-speed tubes for excursions between urban centres.

Additionally, we could revisit rail travel for long-distance travel as electrified railways could be powered solely by clean and renewable energy sources. Freight shipping could also be handled by rail, or by waterways – once again reducing fuel consumption and relying on existing infrastructure and technologies.

Whether we choose to update older technologies for the new millennium, or create entirely new modes of modern transportation, we are limited by little more than our imaginations; at the turn of the previous century, airplane travel was deemed an impossible dream, and now hundreds of passengers can travel thousands of miles in a matter of hours.

Experts in the field forecast that the Earth’s crude oil reserves will last approximately 50 years at the current rate of extraction. The bigger concern, at the moment, is the probable difficulty of obtaining that oil; once all the easily accessible reserves are exhausted, we will be reliant on shale oil or deep-water drilling rigs – which both have the potential to wreak havoc on the planet.

But if North Americans were to limit their oil use, we could conserve the remaining supply for necessities and help to save the environment by reducing harmful emissions as well as leaving oil pockets undisturbed. The question, of course, is whether Americans can give up their creature comforts: quite a few States still rely on oil heating systems in older, less energy-efficient homes; in certain outlying areas, oil is still used to generate electricity; some industries use oil for process heating; though by far the worst perpetrator is the travel industry – and even though a small portion is used up by the freight industry (whether by land, sea, or air), the lion’s share of American oil consumption is employed for personal transportation.

Most households own multiple vehicles – both recreational and traditional. We drive massive gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs, own classic cars or muscle cars, ATVs or motorcycles, and rarely carpool or use public transportation if we are of age to drive and can afford a vehicle. To North Americans, vehicles are more than a means of transportation – they are a status symbol, and a reflection of our personalities and success in life which means we want the biggest and the best. Unfortunately, though many luxury auto-makers like Porsche, Audi, Lexus, and Tesla are creating hybrid or electric cars and SUVs, there are no massive fuel-efficient SUVs or pickup trucks.

In order to end our oil addiction, we will have to change our consumer and image-focused mindset, trading in our high-consumption wheels for more environmentally-friendly alternatives such as electric cars, public transportation or even active transportation such as walking or cycling. We can further reduce our oil dependencies by making use of the vast network of railways already spread coast-to-coast for freight shipping and taking 18-wheelers out of circulation, which will have the additional advantage of reducing road damage caused by heavy trucks; and still more, if the railways were electrified, we could entirely eliminate the need for oil.

The possibilities exist and the strategies can be put into place to drastically reduce North American oil consumption and exploitation. The decisions are now in the hands of policymakers and consumers – do we care enough about the future of our planet to change our oil-reliant ways?

Given the multitude of uses for crude oil worldwide, in the transportation, industrial, commercial and residential sectors, it’s not surprising that we are using more petroleum products than ever before. What is also unsurprising is that the U.S.A tops all other countries – more than doubling second ranked China. In fact, North America’s largest three countries all appear in the worldwide top ten oil consuming nations; though our overall consumption has decreased slightly since it peaked in 2007, the United States, Canada and Mexico still have startlingly high rates of oil use.

Americans consume an average of approximately 20 million barrels of petroleum products daily, which is more than the European Union’s total usage of 15 million barrels per day. And while Canada ranked only 7th in 2018, at just over 2.2 million barrels per day, its per capita usage rate is quite high: in 2018, it was 64.4 barrels daily per 1000 people and ranked slightly ahead of the United States’ 61 barrels. Mexico ranked behind both with 2.075 million barrels per day overall and fell far behind their per capita amount with only 18 daily barrels per 1000 residents.

As per the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2017, 14 million barrels – or 71% of Americans’ total petroleum consumption – was used daily for transportation. The industrial sector was responsible for nearly a quarter of the total, with residential use accounting for 3%, the commercial sector for 2% and electrical power generation for just 1% of the overall consumption.

According to the National Energy Board of Canada, the transportation sector accounts for approximately two-thirds of Canada’s oil demands; this can be attributed to the sheer size of the nation, and long distances that people and goods must travel between cities, combined with the high number of vehicles in use. Next, the industrial sector is responsible for nearly 30% of the oil demand – for mining, manufacturing, and oil and gas extraction; the commercial and agricultural industries collectively account for a tenth of the demand, while usage in the residential sector, primarily for heating and electricity, consumes a mere 2% of the overall amount.

It is incumbent upon North Americans to set an example for the rest of the planet by reducing our oil consumption as much as possible, and given all the alternative energy sources under development, there is no time like the present.

Americans are obsessed with oil! We drive. We fly. We farm. We heat our homes. The refined petroleum products we need are derived mainly from crude oil; they are also produced by processing natural gas; and though we can substitute or add renewable biofuels such as ethanol, the fact remains that, as per the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2017, Americans consumed nearly 20 million barrels of petroleum products per day!

Though the United States has the highest rate of oil consumption worldwide, Canada and Mexico both rank within the top ten as well. We are using more oil now that at any other point in history – even though it is an unrenewable resource and it is contributing to pollution and climate change. The average North American uses their car for everything: commuting to work, grocery shopping, going to the gym, or going out for the evening. Most families own multiple vehicles and choose to drive rather than use any other mode of transportation, even if it is a short distance and far more logical to walk.

We have become a society of lazy, greedy, consumers who – even though they know of perfectly viable alternatives – choose to continue endangering our planet because we’d prefer not to change our habits. In a society increasingly characterized by ill health and obesity, the irony of driving to the gym for a workout, then driving to a fast-food restaurant for oil-drenched French fries, burgers, or fried chicken, before driving to the grocery store to stock up on products delivered by massive, diesel-belching, 18-wheeled trucks, and returning home to crank up our oil furnaces is lost on most. Though renewable energy sources abound, and the U.S. and Canada should be leading the field in alternative energy use, we fall sadly behind and remain increasingly entrenched in our addiction to oil consumption. And the vicious cycle continues as health problems are exacerbated by the poor air quality in most major cities, requiring more people to drive rather than walking as they’re no longer healthy enough to do so.

We must hope that the next generations will break from the current trend, choosing cleaner – and more renewable – energy sources and deciding to walk or use other forms of active transportation; otherwise, even though we project running out of crude oil within the next 50 years, our planet may not be fit for habitation long before we’ve reached the end of the fossil fuel supply.

North Americans have an unhealthy attachment to their personal vehicles. When they commute to work, they use their cars. When they go the gym, they use their cars. When they go down the street to buy toilet paper, they use their cars. For a species that evolved walking to where they needed to be, North Americans are surprisingly incapable of moving about without their cars in modern times. This is detrimental on many levels, none more so than the fossil fuel emissions that are released by burning gasoline due to the oil addiction of an entire culture. In order to help steer people away from continued oil overuse, here is a list of alternative transportation methods that can help North Americans become independent from oil consumption:

• Walking is the oldest and healthiest mode of transportation that humans have available to them. There is no more natural way for people to get around than to use the same method our ancestors used. As a bonus, walking is free, it helps a person’s physical health and it creates no pollution or waste of natural resources. Walking is the best alternative for using a car when the commute is short or when time is not an object.
• Riding a bike is another excellent alternative to driving a vehicle. Like walking, it gives the individual an excellent workout without the cost of pollutants or gas prices. Riding a bike can also get you further distances in less time than walking.
• Public transportation, such as a bus or a subway, is a reliable, fuel efficient option. With a number of people taking advantage of a usual bus route, fuel emissions are reduced drastically. Most cities offer a decent public transportation system to their residents.
• Carpooling is joining people you know to commute to places together instead of separate. This cuts the number of vehicles on the road down and helps preserve the air quality.