America worships her SUVs

Question:

<Is it selfish to choose a vehicle based upon safety, if that vehicle ends up fitting someone’s definition of "large vehicle"? > Yes, of course. This idea is simple: the greater mass of the material object, the more resources used to manufacture that object, the more energy is require to manufacture the object, the greater the object impacts the natural environment. Now, people’s justification of safety does not invalidate the basic selfish relationship involved with using more resources…it just makes it more difficult to convince people that we are consuming our natural resources at a rate which is impossible to sustain. So the question is, will human intelligence find a way to avoid a possibly very messy collision with the limitations of nature. I say that managing a limited supply of resources and searching for ways to implement renewable resources is fundamentally more important than satisfying the interests of an EXTREMELY small fraction of the world’s population at the disregard of the rest of the population. Orlando says: Regrettably, a small fraction of stupid but powerful "lions" can spoil the "Jungle" for the smart but weak "monkeys"… Of course, it can only happen because of the indifference of the "little animals"… THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE (This is part of a series of POLITICALLY CORRECT stories for little children, who otherwise may not be ready to live in the Jungle.) Once upon a time, in the deep jungle, lived a Lion and a Monkey… One day the Monkey, tired of the Lion always getting the lion share, and seeing that such injustice represented a danger to all the species of the jungle, demanded justice… The Lion, yawning and stretching, said: "You would have to have paws and sharp teeth…" Then the Monkey, who was very clever, devised a plan: He would go to the costume store, and look like a lion… When the Lion saw him, noticing that the new lion wasn’t a match for him, and fearing competion, killed him on the spot… before the indifferent look of the little animals of the jungle… And that’s how the Law of the Jungle was re-established one more time… NOTE: Other monkeys survived him… "What worries me is not the violence of the few, but the indifference of the many" "Lo que a mi me preocupa no es la violencia de unos pocos, sino la indiferencia de los muchos" M.L. King Jr. http://www.webspawner.com/users/donquijote/index.html http://www.webspawner.com/users/donquijote1/index.html http://www.webspawner.com/users/donquijote2/index.html http://www.webspawner.com/users/donquijote3/index.html http://www.webspawner.com/users/donquijote4/index.html http://www.webspawner.com/users/donquijote5/index.html http://www.webspawner.com/users/donquijote6/index.html http://www.webspawner.com/users/donquijote7/index.html http://www.webspawner.com/users/donquijote8/index.html http://www.webspawner.com/users/donquijote9/index.html http://psrdc.org

Response:

Orlando says: I’m pretty sure driving an unnecessary wasteful big vehicle and then, rather than hiding it, boasting about it is a sign of… IGNORANCE… It’s the same as when you see poor minorities driving large cars… Or would be a coincidence that America rates highest among rich nations for IGNORAMUSES? "Jeff Strickland" <snip> I can’t say how the internal justification works for others, I can only say how it works for me. I agree and I enjoy learning what drives (no pun intended) people’s thinking My choice of automobiles is a fuel efficient 4-door sedan (25mpg), a minivan (20mpg), and a Jeep (20mpg) for weekend jaunts around town and vacation driving. My extragavance is only my motorhome (6mpg) (highway mileage figures) that I use to pull the Jeep. So, I guess that I select vehicles that fit my needs first, and if they can be made fuel efficient then I will select one of those over another model that also fits my needs but is not efficient. rational enough. I’m curious what qualifies as fuel efficient? If the goal is to get the automakers to make more efficient vehicles, then I am all for it. It the goal is to squeeze everybody into a tiny Geo Metro, then I am opposed. The slant of this conversation, before you put your $.02 in, was that Americans are selfish in choosing large cars. The largese of the vehicle doesn’t seem to be your issue, but rather the foolish waste of resources. If this is the case, then the obvious solution is to make the large cars more fuel efficient, and this is a good goal, but the solution of others is to religate Ameircan families into shoebox-sized cars that get good mileage. my goal is simply to learn more about people’s justifications and thoughts in order to have a more intelligent perspective on the debate concerning human consumption of natural resources.

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