Unsustainable [PDF] Jeffrey Dukes of the University of Massachusetts did some math, some estimation, and came up with some numbers. He was looking into fossil fuel consumption, and the amount of plant matter that was needed to generate the fossil fuel. The numbers are staggering. It takes about 23 tons of prehistoric plants to create 1 litre of gasoline. Today, that corresponds to farming 4.3 hectares of wheat to get a litre of gas. Everyday, we consume about 1 year's worth of prehistoric plant matter. All the fossil fuels we've been consuming since the beginning of the industrial revolution took about 13,300 years of plant growth. Now if that doesn't set off alarm bells, I'm not sure what the hell will. His report is published in the journal Climate Change.

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