U.S. gasoline consumption as a share of gross domestic product is nearly five times that in the other major industrialized countries; gasoline accounts for 43 percent of U.S. oil consumption vs. 15 percent in other countries; fuel efficiency in America is 25 percent lower than in the European Union and 50 percent lower than in Japan. —International Monetary Fund (IMF) as quoted by columnist David Ignatius in "A Power Outage At the White House"

Tags: * oil petroleum gasoline consumption conservation Europe Japan global warming environment