Watch FUEL

Director Josh Tickell takes us along for his 11 year journey around the world to find solutions to America's addiction to oil. A shrinking economy, a failing auto industry, rampant unemployment, an out-of-control national debt, and an insatiable demand for energy weigh heavily on all of us. Fuel shows us the way out of the mess we're in by explaining how to replace every drop of oil we now use, while creating green jobs and keeping our money here at home. The film never dwells on the negative, but instead shows us the easy solutions already within our reach.
- summary at IMDb.com

FUEL won the audience award at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, in 2009 it was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award in 'Best Documentary Screenplay' category and it has also won a handful of minor awards.

More at Wikipedia and the official site.

---

Diamond: "we shall soon have lower consumption"

The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world. That factor of 32 has big consequences.

I suspect you heard that one before, no!? Well, Jared Diamond also makes this obvious consideration:

People in the third world are aware of this difference in per capita consumption, although most of them couldn't specify that it's by a factor of 32. When they believe their chances of catching up to be hopeless, they sometimes get frustrated and angry, and some become terrorists, or tolerate or support terrorists. Since Sept. 11, 2001, it has become clear that the oceans that once protected the United States no longer do so. There will be more terrorist attacks against us and Europe, and perhaps against Japan and Australia, as long as that factorial difference of 32 in consumption rates persists.

(My emphasis in quote.)

Controversial professor? Or just stating the obvious? (I say: stating the blaringly obvious!)

Jared Diamond recently vented similar thoughts in an interview: Population versus Consumption (transcript and audio).