Driving Up the Heat: SUVs and Global Warming

[Karmadillo]

http://www.sierraclub.org/globalwarming/SUVreport/

Switching from driving an average car to a 13mpg SUV for one year would waste more energy than if you...

Left your refrigerator door open for 6 years
Left your bathroom light burning for 30 years or
Left your color television turned on for 28 years

Background

When it comes to wasting energy, SUVs are unrivaled. Built with outdated, gas-guzzling technology, many SUVs get just 13 miles per gallon. And the higher gas prices are, the more money they waste.

Auto-industry advertising portrays SUVs as the ticket to freedom and the great outdoors. Commercials depict them climbing massive snow-capped mountains or tearing through desert sand dunes, taking their owners into the wild. In reality, the only off-road action many of these vehicles see is accidentally driving through a flower bed next to the driveway.

Missing from these ads are other contributions from SUVs—the brown haze of air pollution hanging over many of our national parks, images of weather disasters linked to global warming or the oil derricks and tankers needed to feed gas-guzzling SUVs. In contrast to Detroit's carefully crafted image, SUVs have a dark side. They spew out 43 percent more global-warming pollution and 47 percent more air pollution than an average car. SUVs are four times more likely than cars to roll over in an accident and three times more likely to kill the occupants in a rollover. They also cost the owner thousands more on gasoline.

The SUV Threat | Pollution | Energy Security | Safety
Take Action | SUV Report Home

[Atman]

1. All generalizations are false

There wereso many generalizations in that post, I don't know where to begin.

[DS1]

3. Even yours?

[Atman]

4. You see, that was the joke..

"All generalizations are false." Get it? :eyes:

[DS1]

5. Yes, amazingly, I did

But then you failed to followup with a decent argument, and it wasn't that funny anymore :eyes:

[Atman]

14. I left to watch Sopranos...and now Big Love

But I've posted it all before anyway. I'll be back when I have more time. In the meantime, consider what an "SUV" is...a Honda CRX or a Cadillac Escalade? A RAV 4 or a Tahoe? They're all "SUVs." Just sayin'.

[valerief]

2. Before SUVs children used to fit in sedans. Apparently today they

don't. Hence, the demand for SUVs.

I never got the appeal of them. It was like everyone wanted to drive the short bus. I never got the appeal of Forrest Gump either. Guess I'm just not stupid enough.

[Wilms]

6. Of course some children don't fit in sedans.

Neither do many adults.

Obesity is an emerging problem and many folks NEED an SUV so they can squeeze in.

I'm being both sarcastic and serious. I've realy wondered if being overweight makes SUV's more attractive.

[valerief]

7. Nah. TV commercials make them more attractive, not fat butts.

Even fat people fit in sedans.

[AndyTiedye]

8. We Require Them to Wear Seat Belts Now (Which is a Good Thing)

but it does reduce substantially the number of kids you can legally carry in a vehicle.

[northofdenali]

12. Sedans that use just as much gas?

My little Liberty gets 23 mpg/town and 28 mpg/highway.

My next-door neighbor drives a new Chrysler 300. Gets (when lucky) 17 mpg/town and 22 mpg/highway.

So much for that argument.

[RB TexLa]

19. they fit easier in SUVs then sedans n/t

[Kolesar]

9. When it comes to wasting energy, a diet of meat is unrivaled...eom

[AndyTiedye]

10. Nobody Is Switching to an SUV Now

$3 gas has seen to that.
That's why the automakers are crying the blues :nopity:

I think a lot of the people who are driving SUVs are stuck with them.
They're still making payments and can't trade in until its paid off
(if then) because they've lost so much value.

The only SUVs that are still selling well are the hybrids,
which get more than twice the mileage of a typical SUV,
and are cleaner than any gas-powered car.
(The Ford Escape Hybrid is AT-PZEV, which is the same emissions category as the Prius.
Oddly, the Highlander hybrid is only SULEV, which is still very clean, but a step down).

[Codeine]

11. How did we survive before SUVs?

Everyone seemed to be able to haul their kids around, often many more kids than today's families have, just fine in a sedan or wagon. Why the need for a 13mpg behemoth?

[LeftyMom]

13. Well we don't let people drive around with more kids than seatbelts now

and a kid has to be in a child seat or booster until they're nearly adult sized, which was not the case back then. We have much higher safety expectations.

That does't really mandate an SUV though- most families are better served in a much safer sedan or minivan.

[Atman]

15. Were you alive in the seventies? Ever hear of a Kingswood wagon?

It was a Chevy. As big as any SUV, just lower. Cars in general were as big as houses back then, too.

[MadHound]

16. Yeah, I was alive in the seventies

And I remember those big ass wagons and sedans. Amazingly enough, a lot, if not the majority of them, got measurably better gas mileage than a full size SUV. One reason, those big ass wagons and sedans had a modicum of aerodynamic design, whereas SUVs are about as aerodynamic as a box on wheels.

Sad when thirty years later, we're still having to deal with an auto industry that is making a class of passenger vehicles that are arguably less efficient, more polluting, and less safe than the Detroit dinosaurs of yesteryear.

[TX-RAT]

22. Disagree with your last paragraph.

Pick-ups and big wagons usually got between 8 and 10 mpg, depending on motor size. No Catalytic Converters, no abs, no shoulder belts, very few had disk brakes.

My 06 GMC Z71 gets 20 mph on the road and about 15-16, normal driving. Air bags, 3 point belts, disk brakes all around, ABS, air bags, ON-STAR, and much better tires.

[MadHound]

23. I've got a 1951 Chevy 3600, a 3/4 ton pickup

And it gets around 20-23mpg on the highway, and like yours, aprox. 15-16 city. And while you have all those nice safety features, I've got two tons of solid steel surrounding me, which will cut through virtually any other vehicle on the road when I'm going at speed:evilgrin:

I've got a 1967 Ford LTD, and a '49 DeSoto, both of which get a bit better gas mileage than that. Grew up with a 1965 Chrysler New Yorker as well as a 1976 Buick LeSabre that also got better gas mileage than what you're achieving now. And neither of them are as roll-over prone as your GMC.

But yes, they were all, excepting the LeSabre, more polluting. As far as the Onstar device is concerned, if I ever get a vehicle with one of those, it will be the first thing I rip out.

[TX-RAT]

21. They were called station wagons.

[SammyWinstonJack]

24. Big grocery getters, (station wagons) which got the same crappy

13mpg. But it's all these recent SUV owners' fault that we are hitting peak oil and heating up the planet. Yep! Let's kill 'em all and bury them in their SUV! :sarcasm:

[Beaverhausen]

25. Most SUVs I see have one person inside - the driver

I know some people do have a need for SUVs but I think the vast majority don't need something that big.

[AllieB]

26. We had a station wagon

We managed to fit all 5 of us kids in and hockey and baseball equipment too.

[Lorien]

29. To compensate for a tiny penis n/t

[U4ikLefty]

17. Blah. blah , blah....I own a 2002 Tahoe and I'm more liberal than you!!!

...at least that's the outlook of at least ONE person here on DU. Pathetic, isn't it?!?

[corporate_mike]

18. Ford's hybrid SUVs get great mileage

[Karmadillo]

20. Bill McKibbon on SUVs: "I was naked and you did not clothe me. I was

hungry and you drowned me with your Ford Explorer."

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2172

Driving Global Warming

by Bill McKibben

<edit>

If you drive an SUV, then you’re "driving" global warming, even more than the rest of us.

In Bangladesh people spent three months of 1998 living in the thigh-deep water that covered two-thirds of the nation. The inundation came because the Bay of Bengal was some inches higher than normal (as climate changes, sea level rises because warm water takes up more space). That high water blocked the drainage of the normal summer floods, turning the nation into a vast lake. No one can say exactly how much higher that water was because of our recent fondness for semi-military transport in the suburbs. Maybe an inch, who knows?

But the connection is clear. If you care about the people in this world living closest to the margins, then you need to do everything in your power to slow the rate at which the planet warms, for they are the most vulnerable. I was naked and you did not clothe me. I was hungry and you drowned me with your Ford Explorer.

Here’s more: Coral reefs the world over are dying as warmer sea water bleaches them to death -- by some estimates, this whole amazing ecosystem, this whole lovely corner of God’s brain, may be extinct by mid-century. In the far north, scientists recently found that polar bears were 20 percent scrawnier than they’d been just a few years before. As pack ice disappears, they can’t hunt the seals that form the basis of their diet. And on and on -- according to many experts, the extinction spasm caused by climate change and other environmental degradation in this century will equal or surpass those caused by crashing asteroids in geological times. But this time it’s us doing the crashing.

more...

[Sapere aude]

27. This is bullshit thinking.

The mileage someone's vehicle gets is not relevant. How much fuel they burn is. For instance. If someone was to drive a 13 MPG SUV 130 miles they burn 10 gallons. If someone was to drive a 40 MPG car 400 miles they would burn 10 gal.

The premise behind the idea of the SUV wasting gas is that both vehicles are driven the same distance. Since all of us drive different distances you can't make the argument that the SUV wastes gas and the car doesn't.

Basically this argument only shows the person's prejudice.

[Lorien]

28. Wow, talk about twisted logic!

I guess I share the op's "prejudce" for science grounded in fact. You can't honestly be arguing that SUV drivers all drive 1/3 fewer miles than car owners, and therefore mileage is unimportant. Got some statistics to back up that claim?