Letter: Air travel is accelerating human destruction

Editor,

My curiosity, followed by a few calculations, led me to a shocking realization.

From Science.howstuffworks.com, I learned that a Boeing 747 burns one gallon of fuel per second. And from travelandleisure.com, I learned that there are currently an average of about 10,000 commercial flights in the air at any given time.

For simplicity’s sake and just to get an idea, a ballpark number, of what the overall commercial jetliners’ fuel consumption is, I did the following calculations assuming that the average plane is a Boeing 747.

Here’s the math: One gallon per second times 10,000 planes is 10,000 gallons per second, times 60, is 600,000 gallons per minute, times 60, is 36,000,000 gallons per hour.

So commercial jet planes are burning about 36 million gallons of fossil fuel every hour of every day.

Apparently, our worldwide addiction to air travel is playing a big role in accelerating the human race to the abyss.

Detmar Straub

Clinton