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Well I don't have two kids and a dog, I have four kids and a dog does that earn me the right to drive an SUV? The point is that you have to look at your life as a whole and while some decisions you make are not doing to be as good for the environment but others will be. The point is to be conscious. Minivans don't get significantly better gas milage then SUVs and for the most part don't have the leg and head room that SUVs do (for those of us with bigger kids in our car pools) minivans also get stuck off road. (Boy that's fun with a truck load of 9 year old Cub Scouts)
We did the math and the best Minivan we found not only cost significantly more but the third row was too small for my older son and his friends, our second row is reserved for kids in car seats. Add to that the requirement for older and larger kids to be in five point harnesses the width of car seats is now make putting three cross in most mini vans very difficult. We agonized over replacing our stationwagon with a mini van or an SUV and the SUV won out. I am sorry to say that having now driven one for five years it has only endeared itself to me.
We consider ourselves to be extremely environmentally conscious. When we decided to have a larger then replacement number of children we choose adoption. We lived in Los Angeles without a car for several years and my husband commuted to work on his bike for seven years. Now that he works too far to bike he uses a van pool four days a week and he has moved to a work schedule that allows him to work only four days a week. When we chose a neighborhood we choose one where we could walk to everything they needed, movies, grocery, shopping, art galleries restaurants etc. We encourage the older kids to take their bikes or public transportation when they can (which is most of the time) and we carpool to school, sports and music lessons to reduce trips. We eat local produce (ok that one is easy and economical in Southern California ) We don't take resort vacations or destination vacation that require air travel we load up the kids (and their friends) in the SUV and go camping, hiking etc. We recycle, we bring our own bags, we live in a house with no heat source other that passive solar. Now with all of that, do we get a pass to not only drive and SUV but a full sized 4-wheel drive one?
The point of this rant is not to show how wonderful my family is but to say that taking one piece of someone's life, one decision or preference does not diminish their commitment to the environment. You don't know what that person in the SUV in their driveway is doing to balance that gas guzzler.
