Fridge open for 6 years

[GeekGuyAndy]

"Switching from an average car to a 13 mpg SUV would use as much energy as leaving your refrigerator door open for six years."

According to the Sierra Club, driving an SUV is equivilent to:

Leaving a fridge open for 6 years, leaving the bathroom light on for 30 years, or leaving the TV on for 28 years. (No idea how a TV is similar in usage to a lightbulb.)

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

[Hockey4mnhs]

i hate suv's so much!

[Telco]

SUVs are just a convenient target. I'd rather see VW minivans taken off the road than SUVs, as they pollute more being owned by hippies that believe everyone should be required to cut pollution but they shouldn't bother spending a nickel to put new rings in their engine. When I had my SUV, I once sat in a bank drivethru in the next lane over from an old VW minivan, the whole back of the van was plastered with bumper stickers claiming that SUVs were destroying the environment. When they started the van, the cloud of oily smoke was so thick the stickers were no longer visible. That van pumped out more pollution starting up than my SUV pumped out in a year. SUVs also get very similar mileage (within 5MPG) to minivans, but have more capability to haul a load and are far more capable in bad weather, provided the driver isn't an idiot. Modern SUVs are also far cleaner and more efficient than many older cars.

It would be better if the Sierra Club focused more on the really big polluters, like the Northeast. Let's get rid of those 100 year old oil burning heaters that were in use before the word "emissions" existed. So much crude is used to make heating oil that the price of crude can be affected by 10-15 dollars depending on how cold winter is in the Northeast.

Why does the Sierra club attack SUVs, but you never hear them say a word about oil burning furnaces? Because an oil burner which is hidden in the basement is not nearly as pretty a target as the SUV even though they do far more environmental damage. True, we need get the soccer moms out of the SUVs and limit them to the workhorse environment for which they should be designed (the SUVs, not the soccer moms , but we'd do far better to end burning oil to heat houses.

Crude should be reserved only for portable energy requirements, stationary energy requirements should be provided exclusively by electricity. To do that, we'd need more nukes, more hydro, more solar, more wind, more wave generators. Limiting crude to mobile power sources would likely double or triple the amount of crude available, and since mobile power sources are far more regulated on emissions outputs the pollution would likely drop to 10 percent or less of what it is now.

[ELF]

Umm, there are a million SUV's out there, and 95% have a single driver with no load. So I think they are a good target. But yes there are many other sources of pollution and waste too.
I can't even remember the last time I saw a VW micro bus, But I think Clench owns one LOL.

[VetteOwner]

lol the ammount of vw busses left in the world in crappy condition is probably less than 1% theres tones of restored ones but thier in tip top running/driving shape. that and its only a tiny 4 banger so it cant be polluting that much. suv's are truley pointless tho. i mean who needs to carry 8 people all teh time AND be able to crawl up a mountan?

[SVOboy]

fuel economy forum
vegan recipes
green home improvement
honda gas mileage

[omgwtfbyobbq]

Welp, FWIW, the impact of pollution depends where you live. In dense, warm areas like CA that have natural areas where pollution tends to clump, I can see the point of strict smog standards. But in BFE, it's not as big of a concern imo.

[cfg83]

omgwtfbyobbq -

Originally Posted by omgwtfbyobbq

Welp, FWIW, the impact of pollution depends where you live. In dense, warm areas like CA that have natural areas where pollution tends to clump, I can see the point of strict smog standards. But in BFE, it's not as big of a concern imo.

That's why I have no problem with the original "farm truck" emissions law that became the SUV loophole. In agriculture, the population density is so much lower that the harm to people is so much less.

In LA in the Valley, I *never* experience the shortness of breath that I experienced in the beach cities in the 1970's. There's no comparison. The air is cleaner with maybe twice as many cars.

I don't remember the exact phrase, but Native Americans originally called LA something "valley of smoke" because even before there were cars, the air was already hazy.

CarloSW2

[Telco]

Wow, it's either or, 100 percent, no shades of grey here eh? Either you must hate SUVs or kill anyone that says bad about them by pumping their lungs full of gasoline and lighting them up eh? And here I got rid of my own SUV.

My point about this was, why target only SUVs? It's a convenient, attractive target, but is far from being a top polluter or even a top fuel waster. Trucks use just as much fuel as SUVs, but nobody hates trucks. Yet SUVs are trucks with more interior room. How about them crew cabs? They use more fuel than SUVs, but nobody ever goes after them. And when attacking SUVs, is it just the full size ones or all of them? Some of the small ones get almost 30MPG, should their owners go to Hell or is Heck good enough for them? So far as only having one person to a vehicle, you'll never get away from that. People go to work and back, and there isn't necessarily anyone living near to carpool with.

What's worse, nobody said a word about the stationary boilers of the Northeast, which pollute far more than all the SUVs put together do. All you did was slam me for daring to defend the SUV as having a purpose in life. Burning a portable fuel source in a stationary system makes far less sense than running an SUV does. And the only real problem with the SUV is how it's been perverted into a status symbol. So I state again, people rail against the SUV because it's a convenient, attractive target, but won't do what is necessary to eliminate true polluters.

[cfg83]

Telco -

Originally Posted by Telco

Wow, it's either or, 100 percent, no shades of grey here eh? Either you must hate SUVs or kill anyone that says bad about them by pumping their lungs full of gasoline and lighting them up eh? And here I got rid of my own SUV.

My point about this was, why target only SUVs? It's a convenient, attractive target, but is far from being a top polluter or even a top fuel waster. Trucks use just as much fuel as SUVs, but nobody hates trucks. Yet SUVs are trucks with more interior room. How about them crew cabs? They use more fuel than SUVs, but nobody ever goes after them. And when attacking SUVs, is it just the full size ones or all of them? Some of the small ones get almost 30MPG, should their owners go to Hell or is Heck good enough for them? So far as only having one person to a vehicle, you'll never get away from that. People go to work and back, and there isn't necessarily anyone living near to carpool with.

What's worse, nobody said a word about the stationary boilers of the Northeast, which pollute far more than all the SUVs put together do. All you did was slam me for daring to defend the SUV as having a purpose in life. Burning a portable fuel source in a stationary system makes far less sense than running an SUV does. And the only real problem with the SUV is how it's been perverted into a status symbol. So I state again, people rail against the SUV because it's a convenient, attractive target, but won't do what is necessary to eliminate true polluters.

SUVs as they currently exist (and this may be changing) qualify for an emissions loophole that classifies them as "farm trucks". I think the law goes something like "if the vehicle is constructed on a truck frame, it's a farm vehicle and therefore is allowed to pollute more". This means that SUVs, by design, are gas guzzlers and greater sources of pollution. There are voluntary exceptions to this. Honda made their SUVs comply with normal car emissions from the get-go, so that's nice.

Here is my question to you. Can you justify owning an SUV in the majority of urban environments across America? I don't think you can. They are legitimate targets because they waste resources and pollute more in a context where a better choice is available. Anything you can do with an SUV in an urban environment can also be accomplished by a station wagon, minivan, or a trailer hitch.

I don't have problems with trucks that are actually used as trucks. However, if someone buys a Dooley just to satisfy their ego, then that person proves my point. If SUVs were 5% or less of new cars on the road, I wouldn't consider them to be an issue. I could go on and on about the uselessness of super long limos, but they are few and far between fishies in the ocean of cars around me.

I'll have to think about the "crude for vehicles only" argument.

More URLs ...
http://www.elmerfudd.us/suvin.htm
http://fubini.swarthmore.edu/~WS30/HKFinalProject.html
http://www.citizen.org/documents/Dri...fact_sheet.pdf
http://www.citizen.org/documents/gas_prices.pdf
http://thebesttruckingschool.com/Qui...20Concerns.htm

CarloSW2