[at-l] help...

[wdlists@optonline.net (Walter Daniels)]

> Just an interesting rambling on why SUV's are no better or worse than any
> other car:
>
>
>
> from: www.kunstler.com (any New Urbanists out there?)
> >November 22, 2002
> >        For quite a while now it's been fashionable among the
> > environmentally-minded to decry the ownership of SUVs. It occurs to me
> > that this reveals exactly what is wrong with the conventional
> thinking of
> > the progressive / green crowd.
> >       Would the everyday environment in America be any better if it were
> > full of high gas milage cars instead of honking big gas-guzzling Chevie
> > Denalis and Ford Expeditions? I don't think it would make a damn bit of
> > difference, really. We'd still be a car-dependent society stuck in a
> > national automobile slum. The problem with America is not big cars, it's
> > the fact that we're always in any cars of any size so much of the time,
> > and that cars of all sizes have such an overwhelming presence
> in our lives.
> >       The anti-SUV mantra is related in spirit to the quixotic
> project by
> > Amory Lovins and his Rocky Mountain Institute to design an
> > environmentally-friendly "hyper-car." Such a high milage, low-emissions
> > vehicle, they say, would help usher in a sustainable way-of-life in
> > America. What horseshit. It would do nothing to mitigate the degraded
> > public realm of Parking Lot nation. It would not lessen commuting
> > distances or times. It would not reduce the number of car trips per day
> > per household. If anything, the hyper-car would only provide moral
> > justification for continuing to live in a drive-in dystopia. It would
> > make suburban sprawl seem normative and desirable, instead of
> what it is:
> > the most destructive development pattern the world has ever seen.
> >       There's an interesting explanation for why they pursue
> this project
> > so zealously. Environmentalists are keen on the culture of
> > quantification. It's easy to count up the number of carbon dioxide
> > molecules in a cubic foot of air, so reducing them makes you a moral
> > victor in the jihad against air pollution. By the same simplistic
> > reasoning big-cars-bad, little-cars-good.
> >       In the age of austerity and global strife that is coming down the
> > pike at us, we are going to need walkable neighborhoods, towns and
> > villages and richly multi-modal transportation systems, including public
> > transit. In the meantime, I really don't give a fuck whether Americans
> > drive Humvees or Toyota Celicas. All of them contribute to make my
> > everyday world a worse place.
>

This whole ramble certainly misses the point of most environmentalists. Good
gas mileage is good but zero usage is always better. Since we aren't likely
to get to zero usage, then 50% less usage might be achievable and clearly
50% better gas mileage of those that are driven is achievable, so you get a
net result of 1/4 of the pollution - an achievable goal by pressing hard on
both issues.