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Selfishness not just greed is problem

Big Oil is certainly a major player in destroying the planet, but each and every one of us plays a major role when we buy and drive gas guzzling, polluting SUVs and other large vehicles. The worst are commuters who insist on driving these environment-destroyers when they have no real need to drive them. If we can put away our self-centeredness and selfishness, nearly every household with a driving commuter ought to own a high mileage hybrid for commuting. When there's just one or two people in the car, you really don't need anything larger than, say, our Honda Insight which really does get 60 to 70 mpg on the highway and 30 to 50 in the city (we've owned it 5 years and have gotten 45.3 mpg for the life of the car). It's also got near zero emissions. Yet the American public avoided such an environmentally-friendly, low-cost car in such numbers, that Honda stopped selling it in the U.S. this past September. And even without its availability, the new 2007 Honda Fit gets 39 mpg highway and 26 to 32 city, seats 4 to 5 adults and isn't even a hybrid (yep, that's our "big" car).

But far too many American households are just plain too selfish and just cannot resist buying the high-pollutin', low mileage behemoths that Detroit (and even Honda and Toyota) continue to promote far more than their environmentally-friendly autos.

Ah, for the day the Tesla finally hits the road. It's an all-electric sports car that goes from 0 to 60 in 4 seconds (like anybody needs that kind of acceleration) and it has a range of 250 miles, plenty for most drivers (the average car is driven just 30 miles a day). Obviously priced out of the range of most people (it will go on sale in 2007 for over $100,000), the Tesla is an engineering breakthrough that will lead to affordable and more practical zero-pollution all-electric cars. A change is gonna come - or else our grandchildren and their grandchildren will pay the price with their lives.

Posted by: dl@...   Posted on: 11/27/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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