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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
You remind me of what a bartender at the M&M said about why he didn't like Jimmy Carter way back when. "He's a Baptist. They'll fuck your wife all week long and sit in the front pew, pious as hell, Sunday morning."
That's you now.
The perfect ad for GM...
"I am an environmentalist and didn't mean to buy this SUV, but there it is in front of my house."
Cut to hip, alternative looking Seattle-ite type with funky glasses. Cool.
Not.
We have three kids (and before you go judging that, yes, two of them were adopted) and two dogs. We drive a Mazda 5. It has six seats (2-2-2 configuration), the front two rows are buckets and the back two seats are perfectly comfortable for children (and with three kids, our 9-year-old is always in the last row, sometimes with the dogs on his lap...). All four back seats can be folded down individually to give you all sorts of configurations for cargo. The kicker? We get...drum roll please...an average of 30-31 MPG, which is even higher than expected.
Do we wish we had a bigger car? Sure, sometimes, and it's easy to think that way now that gas is down to <$2 a gallon. When we're packed to the brim with luggage for five and the dogs are on our laps, yeah, we're craving more space. But that's maybe five days out of the 365 days a year that we drive our car. We looked at the Honda Odyssey and came close to buying it, but then gas prices shot up to $4/gallon while we were car shopping and it sealed the deal. I know that next year, or in the next few years, when gas prices go up, we will have NO regrets whatsoever. If we need to haul a boat, or drive a soccer team full of kids to a birthday party, we'll rent a truck or a bus or whatever the hell we need to get from point A to point B. But in the meantime, I will drive the smallest car that I possibly can on a daily basis. Not just for me, but for everyone else I share this planet with.
Having two kids is NO excuse for getting an SUV. Smug assholes like the author of this article are STEALING from all of us- including MY CHILDREN. You are stealing the future; the environment and all its precious resources are being wasted on your generation. My husband and I are in our twenties and are terrified of what will happen when the Earth is torn to shreds and the entire human species is left paralyzed by a lack of fuel and investment in clean energies. When we decided to have a large family we were determined that we would NOT live off the backs of future generations.
Mark, when your kids are unable to breathe clean air, or travel long distances because there is no fuel left, I'm sure they will NOT be thanking you for buying your big, stupid SUV to drive around their friends when they were ten years old. Excuses, excuses...you're just like every other "green" yuppie jerk.
If you have children, you should be driving the safest, yet most fuel efficient vehicle you can buy. Your children are the reason NOT to buy an SUV.
"Daddy, what happened to the polar bears? Could we have saved them?"
Yeah, right now I have a Subaru Impreza Outback Sport wagon, in which I transport 3 dogs (to Agility and Flyball tournaments) 2 people and camping equipment. IF we need more space, we use the boyfriend's Ford Focus wagon, which holds a bit more. If we're feeling lazy and don't want to pack carefully, we borrow my parents' well-used Odyssey. Probably the Focus gets the best mileage. The Subaru was great when I lived in the Chicago area (and still is for occasional heavy snow) but I probably don't need AWD at this point. However, it's 7 years old and paid for.
I hope, based on the article's picture, that the SUV is resting on your foot you bonehead.
I'm sure your article is clever and witty and that "what's up with dat?" tone is certainly a cool breeze of humor (hence your hat), but why should I have to dodge your guzzler or subsidize your irresponsibility?
Your article is bargaining a bit, so I suspect you're already grieving. That's not buyer's remorse you're feeling. It is true grief. You know what you've done is wrong, and you can't take it back. That thing will be an albatross around your neck for years to come, and you know it.
Sticking to the bike would NOT have been a foolish consistency. ...and, personally, I'm glad your bike doesn't fit in the back of your new ride. Bikes are to be ridden, not driven.
...now park that thing, and go push pedals.
My wife and I, with three kids under 3, have a 2003 Passat Wagon; a 1996 Honda Civic; and a 1995 BMW M3. We drive the Passat when we take the kids; we drive the Civic (the only undented body panel is the hood) when there are two or three of us (it gets the most use); and I drive the M3 sparingly for fun, when I need the car to project an image for others to observe.
And yet...we can't carry one more person than our family, without moving to an SUV or Minivan. This is true. The Volvo wagon has two seats in the back that can't be used with child seats; there are no other car choices. All three of our cars can break 30 mpg on the highway. No SUV or Minivan can get close. What are we to do? GM and VW offer 7 passenger 40+ MPG vehicles in Europe; they don't offer them here. That is what we want.
The author pinned this question on society by buying a SUV; what are YOU going to do about getting me more oil and mitigating my increased contribution to climate change? We believe in personal responsibility so pin the question on ourselves: how do we get around the occasional need to carry 6 or 7? We have chosen so far to arrange our lives to never need to carry more than 5; we will buy a trailer and hitch for road trips. At some point, when VW offers the Sharan 7 passenger van here that gets more than our Passat wagon, we'll be first in line.
3 car seats will fit across the back seat easily. Or two seats and an adult.
I'm 6'4", 6'5" with shoes. A lot of my height is in my torso so you can imagine that I dislike a lot of cars. Oddly, the smaller the car, the more room I usually get. *
The fit is the TARDIS of cars. It truly is bigger on the inside.
I put my SNOWBLOWER in my Fit and did so with the back hatch FULLY closed after I ran over the neighbor's frozen newspaper and had to take it in.
This:
http://www.yardmachines.com/wcsstore/pics/YardMachines/31A-62EE729_prod_lg.jpg
fit nicely inside this:
http://www.automedia.com/NewCarBuyersGuide2008/photos/2008/Honda/Fit/Hatchback/2008_Honda_Fit_ext_1.jpg
Snowblower repair guy couldn't believe his eyes.
Enjoy your SUV when gas goes back up you green poser you.
*Worst car for space for me: Hummer H2. (Hotel courtesy vehicle. - Kept hitting my head on the ceiling part that hangs down.)
There's nothing wrong with buying an SUV.
And there's nothing wrong with being fundamentally opposed to buying an SUV.
But to buy something that you're fundamentally opposed to is just strange.
I don't know you Mark, but maybe you only "think" you care about the environment.
Well, Mark's article was rather coy and lame it is true. However, despite my driving a minivan that gets good mileage, my own moral imperfections and lapses prevent me from delivering the same force of criticism against this criminal and his planet-killing steel wheelchair, quasi-Hummer, chariot of murder.
One hopes that the shrillness of the indignation from these letters will provide some kind of moral corrective or at least a spirtual enema for the wayward, so-called environmentalist. But I wonder if the sheer unpleasant noise and heat produced by all the self-righteous whining, might not be an environmental hazard in itself?
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
