perfidy

Check this out! A study from the University of Utah estimates that, for every gallon of gasoline you put in your car, 98 tons of prehistoric plant matter had to die.

I'm not throwing that out there to be an environmentalist doomsayer, though numbers that big do induce a little save-the-world spasm. I just think that's 98 tons is awesomely huge number. The Slashdot story which linked to the study notes that this equates to roughly 4 tons of plants per car per mile. Daaaamn. Thirty-odd tons of plant matter! In my Pontiac! Just to go to the store!

I don't know which is more mind-boggling: the sheer amount of dead plants it takes to move our society, or the sheer amount of dead plants that must have existed.