Don’t worry, I won’t spend all day on this, but I thought I should post this and respond:

Dear Mr. Goldberg: Your argument about US energy efficiency is unfortunately not supported by the facts. Please go to the US government’s Environmental Information Agency page, and take the time to look at the Carbon Intensity data, and also to this page , and examine the Energy Intensity data. In both cases, the US is less efficient than other large industrial and industrializing countries, in both our use of energy and our production of carbon. China’s Carbon Intensity being one exception to this general trend. Here are a few examples: 2004 Carbon Intensity, Metric Tons of Carbon per $1000 China 1.07 US 0.69 France 0.31 UK 0.50 Germany 0.51 India 0.37 Japan 0.34 France 0.31 2004 Energy Intensity, BTUs per $1000 US 9,336 China 9,080 France 7,209 Germany 7,175 UK 6,205 Japan 6,532 India 4,205 I hope that you provide this information to your readers as I am sure you would them to have a full knowledge of these facts. Sincerely, Peter Rogers, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Bates College

Me: Fair enough, but I’m not sure how much this refutes what I said. I wrote that we do “pretty well.”

And I think we do. There are a few things to keep in mind. We are a giant country and we like cars. If we had Europe’s rail system, we’d do better to be sure (though that isn’t an argument for building one). Also if we had France’s nuclear energy system we’d do even better still. Nonetheless we do pretty good on the merits. Greenhouse gas intensity in our industrial sector is on par or better than most of Europe’s. Our industrial GHG emissions since 1990 have been completely flat. The growth has come from residential energy consumption (thank John Edwards for his giant new pad) and transportation. Both of these are tied to population growth — a problem Europe doesn’t really have, just ask Mark Steyn. Our efficiency is improving nicely while Europe (which partly stacked the Kyoto deck because of one-time gains in Britain and Germany) is really stumbling of late.

That sounds like “pretty well” to me. And, when you factor in what we buy with this energy for the planet, I think we do great (vide Michael Novak ).

Update: Oh one thing I should correct, I think the reader’s comment in that “pretty well” post that we contribute 33% of global GDP is off the mark. There are different numbers out there, but for the most part they track pretty close, give or take a few points, the energy we use.