Everybody is talking green these days, said Vaughn Vennerberg, president of XTO Energy Inc., at the recent IPAA Leaders in Industry luncheon in Houston. “It’s very common, from the federal level to the state level.”

Hydrocarbon emissions are a big part of most green initiatives, and to quantitatively evaluate global emissions, Vennerberg has developed the “Hydrocarbon Man” to graphically depict regional areas’ disparity in carbon footprints.

“What we look at is the Hydrocarbon Man, and fossil fuels, and how they relate,” he said.

There are three groups. The first is the subsistence group, where individuals in undeveloped countries grow just enough food to feed their families and support their animals and farmland. They have a very small carbon footprint.

The next group is the emerging urbanization group, meaning individuals who have moved from rural to urban areas. “This group is experiencing a very rapid shift in growth and population increases due to the migration from less populous areas into the urban areas,” he said. Urbanization is not always attributable to high density. Using Manila as an example, Vennerberg noted that the high cost of living there has forced many to live in very low-cost slum areas.

The third group includes the U.S., where the standard of living refers to the quality and quantity of goods and services that are delivered and how they are delivered. The U.S. standard of living demands a great amount of oil equivalent, when compared to other countries, he said.

Estimates of economic forecasts and gross domestic product (GDP), defined as the output of goods and services produced by labor and property, continue to show that GDP is dropping, he said. “Exports will continue to drop, spending will lessen and there will be increased inventory levels due to stalled personal consumption.”

Eventually, however, the global economy is going to continue to grow, even though it has slowed dramatically. “It is going to happen. You can’t slow a growth machine for long, especially in the U.S. where everyone wants to own a home and a car and an iPod,” he said.

Looking at the “backdrop of the global economy,” it is all about energy consumption and industrialization, which must increase, he said.

“GDP is all about the pursuit of a standard of living and economic growth,” said Vennerberg. “China has a population of about 1.3 billion, and each person consumes about 6.6 barrels of oil per year. In the U.S., we have a population of about 285 million, and the per-person consumption is about 60 barrels per year.”