Kolbert makes a mathematical error when she states that U.S. total annual energy expenditures, of what she says is roughly a tenth of our gross domestic product, amount to more than a quadrillion (a thousand trillion) dollars. Since our actual G.D.P. is thirteen trillion dollars, it is overstating our energy expenditures a thousandfold. A quadrillion is more than twenty-one times the world's output, of 46.6 trillion dollars, and to reach this figure we'd need a period of hyperinflation. This is not impossible; after the Second World War, hyperinflation reduced the value of all the Hungarian currency in circulation to one-thousandth of one U.S. cent.The article in which the error appeared was probably in the New Yorker two weeks earlier. I don't have the reference handy.
For information about hyperinflation, visit