How much do Americans hate little bitty cars?
Americans, on average, have gained enough weight during the past 40 years to cancel out automakers’ vehicle-lightweighting efforts such as using lighter components or removing spare tire, reflecting an additional challenge automakers face to meet progressively more strict fuel-economy and greenhouse-gas emissions standards.
Yeah, guilty. I’ve gained a lot of weight over the past 40 years. And somehow I doubt I’ll ever fit into those toddler pants again.
Ha. Yes, I know that’s not what the story means.
Hat tip Insty.
UPDATE – I thought about excerpting this column I wrote waaaaay back in 2006, but then I thought: nah. I’ll just re-post the whole thing.
If I Eat Another Donut, The Terrorists Will Have Won
We, Americans, are fat. We, Americans, use too much gas.
Truisms, if not outright facts. And for the first time, they’ve been linked. One is at least partly a product of the other, according to this new study:
Weight gain means lower gas mileage
Want to spend less at the pump? Lose some weight. That’s the implication of a new study that says Americans are burning nearly 1 billion more gallons of gasoline each year than they did in 1960 because of their expanding waistlines. Simply put, more weight in the car means lower gas mileage.
Using recent gas prices of $2.20 a gallon, that translates to about $2.2 billion more spent on gas each year.
“The bottom line is that our hunger for food and our hunger for oil are not independent. There is a relationship between the two,” said University of Illinois researcher Sheldon Jacobson, a study co-author.
Thanks to the New Jersey Supreme Court, national Democrats were desperately in need of their own October Surprise. Viola: being fat is bad for you in ways you never knew.
It’s bad for individuals, healthwise. It’s bad for society, because of the greater drains on health care resources. We already knew about those.
And now this. “(Researchers) estimated that more than 39 million gallons of fuel are used each year for every additional pound of passenger weight.”
It’s hurting average Americans in the pocketbooks. Not by much: the study says that if you lose 100 pounds, you’d save about $40 a year at today’s prices.
But collectively, as a nation, a billion fewer gallons a year means lower global demand, which should – absent other factors – bring prices down at the pump.
Not to mention the few billion dollars not going into the pockets of Middle Eastern terror-supporting dictators. Our ravenous consumption of beer and sausage and deep-fried Twinkies is helping keep our enemies fed!
Support the troops! Eat salad!
It’s the perfect issue for a Democratic Party poised to take control of Congress. Imagine: an issue both of national health, and of National Security, that the President continues to ignore!
Congressional investigations. CEOs of Hostess, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola testifying under subpoena. Lawsuits. Tax penalties on businesses which don’t provide nutritional counseling and exercise programs. New entitlement spending. Whole new bureaucracies. The U.S. Department of Six-Pack Abs, a Cabinet-level agency. Nanny state nirvana!
Democrats Care More about us, and about Peace in the Middle East. No, they won’t put more domestic oil on the market, but by God, they’ll use government power to save us from ourselves!
But it doesn’t stop there: this issue goes further. Big Food. Big Oil. Big Pharma. Wal-Mart. All the Dems’ biggest bugaboos.
A corporate conspiracy, hatched in the most palatial boardrooms. First, get the people hooked on the burgers, the soda, the fried, fatty, butter-drenched and Super-sized Culture of More.
Fatten them up, so Big Oil can suck them dry.
Forget comprehensive health care plans that include preventative care. Push employees onto over-stretched under-funded government health care, then let Big Pharma hook them on diet pills!
National security? Hah! We’ve got profits to reap!
And it doesn’t stop there. For example, I could lose a couple (okay, maybe ten) pounds. But what difference will it make? I’ve got four kids. They’re all growing, and the law won’t let me stop feeding them. That means our collective family weight is going up, not down.
Not only that, but what does every big family need? A minivan. A big, heavy minivan that seats eight plus the luggage and gets…what? Lousy gas mileage!
What segment of society is most likely to have lots of kids? The Christian Right, who are President Bush’s biggest allies. And President Bush is in whose pocket? Big Oil’s.
And try this on for size: what’s the latest Muslim scare? That they’ll take over, eventually, simply because they have more babies than the West. They’ll breed us out! We need bigger families, which means larger vehicles, carrying more weight but getting worse gas mileage….
…but that means spending more on gas, more money flowing into the Middle East, more financial support for terrorism…
…and therefore greater chance that Republicans – the party of national security – will retain power.
Karl Rove is beyond genius.
What’s that, you say? Twisted logic? That’s right. Twisted. Like a pretzel. A big, soft, warm pretzel, dripping with melted cheese, and a bottle of beer to wash it down.
The diet starts tomorrow. I swear.
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