The True Costs of our Oil Addiction

If we beat our oil addiction …

• In the United States alone, tens of thousands of citizens will not die prematurely each year and tens of thousands more will avoid hospitalizations.

• Millions will be spared asthma attacks.

• Diesel exhaust will no longer cause tens of thousands of new cases of cancer every year.

• On the day that petroleum use becomes the exception rather than the rule, minorities and the poorest among us will no longer suffer five times more asthma and lung cancer than everyone else simply because they live near freeways, railroads, and refineries.

• We will no longer consider despoiling our most valuable natural resources for securing a few more days worth of oil.

• There will be little or no petroleum-related amounts of lead, benzene, toluene, xylene, MTBE, and other toxins in our food and drinking water.

• Tens of millions of gallons of oil will no longer wash upon our shores each year from spills and polluted roadways.

• The United States will no longer send $500,000 every minute to largely anti-American foreign countries to buy their crude oil.

• Billions in potential tax revenues will not be drained from local, state, and federal treasuries every year when tax exemptions and subsidies for some of the richest corporations in the world are ended.

• Farmers will no longer lose as much as a third of their crops to petroleum related air and water pollution, but will again reap what they sow.

• Consumers will no longer waste millions of dollars on fraudulent grades of fuel for their vehicles.

• Though global warming will still affect us because of the hundred-year buildup of greenhouse gases, we will no longer face a future that promises to grow worse and worse, especially if we help other nations move away from burning fossil fuels at the same time we do so ourselves.

• The ways of life of villagers from the Colombian countryside to the Niger River Delta will no longer be distorted by oil pipelines and drilling rigs that transect their landscapes.

• Our sons and daughters will not die in foreign wars to protect our access to oil.