Sustainability Indicator: $29 Billion For Better Mileage

Today's sustainability indicator, $29 billion, is the estimated cost of a proposed European program that would increased automobile efficiency. The amount that fuel bills would fall: $74 billion.

And there's more... 

• 757,969: U.S. marijuana arrests in 2011.
• 534,704: all violent-crime arrests combined for the same period.
  
• 6 tons: CO2 generated by 3 round-trip flights from Philadelphia to San Francisco.
  
• 6.6 tons: C02 generated by an entire year of electricity in the average U.S. household.
  
• 4: times you could fill the New Orleans Superdome with gas wasted in U.S. traffic jams. 
  
• 380 pounds: annual CO2 pollution emitted in traffic congestion, per commuter.
  
• 40 percent: proxy resolutions last year pertaining to environmental and social concerns.
• 30 percent: environmental and social resolutions during the prior proxy season.  
  
• 11%: global decline in clean energy investment last year amid declining subsidies.
  
• 32%: decline in U.S. clean-energy investments last year amid declining subsidies. 
• 20%: rise in Chinese clean-energy investments during the same period. 
  
• 2.2 cents per kilowatt hour: wind-energy tax credit quietly extended in the fiscal-cliff deal. 
  
• 59 percent: decline in wind installations last year amid uncertainty about the extension. 
  
• 17: health ranking of the U.S. among 17 wealthy countries in a study of health outcomes. 
  
• $2.7 trillion: U.S. annual spending on healthcare -- more than any other nation.
  
• 55.3 degrees Fahrenheit: average temperature for contiguous U.S. in 2012, a record.
• 511,000 ounces: estimated 2013 shortfall in palladium amid record carmaker demand. 
• 83 percent: energy consumed in the U.S. last year that was produced domestically.
• 74 percent: energy independence in 2008. 
• 48 million: Americans who get sick each year from contaminated foods.
• 0.4 percent: food importers checked annually by FDA inspectors. 
• 1 in 3: global proportion of women ages 20 to 24 who were married while still children.
• 43%: women in India who marry before their 18th birthday.  
• 74%: Americans who acknowledge "global warming is affecting weather" in the U.S.
• 5.8 percent: U.S. electricity needs met by non-hydro renewable energy. 
• 3.1 percent: electricity produced by non-hydro renewables in 2008.
• 210: current measure of the UN's World Food Price Index.
• 210: the price threshold associated with a sharp rise in social unrest and food riots.
• 50 percent: world transport fuels replaceable by converting 17.5% of farm waste to biofuel.
• 1.32 million square miles: Current Arctic sea ice, the least in 33 years of satellite records.
• 18 percent: decrease from the previous record-low Arctic ice, recorded in 2007.
• 330: consecutive months that global temperatures topped the 20th century average.
• 626 million: people in India who still defecate in the open, contributing to superbugs.
• 251 million: people who gained improved sanitation in the country from 1990 to 2010.
• 67%: return from a portfolio based on the Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index since 2006.
• 31%: return of the Leadership Index's Global 500 peers during the same period.
• 1,079: jobs created by the average U.S. wind farm.
• 75,000: total workers currently employed by U.S. wind power industry.
• 75%: world's surface that had unusually hot summers each year over the last decade.
• 33%: world's surface with hot summers in the baseline years from 1951 to 1980.
• 59%: proportion of emissions-reductions efforts that pay for themselves in 3 years.
• $10 billion: annual savings on U.S. electric bills from new lightbulb standards.
• 30: large power plants it takes to produce electricity equivalent to the lightbulb savings.

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