Letters to the Editor
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Hybrid Fools' Paradise
It's true. I drive a Civic Hybrid. My neighbors on either side have Priuses. There's another Civic Hybrid down the block. And someone in the next block has a Highlander Hybrid. Priuses are the run-away favorite -- you could turn it into a drinking game, you know, every time one drives by take a shot -- but this part of Oakland is a hybrid fools' paradise. And it's kinda cool.
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CARcinogens are not green
Let me get this straight: A prius gets less than twice the fuel economy as any old car. And this bloke says driving a prius is a positive environmental choice. Right. I watch my friends in Berkeley drive their hybrids to the grocery store to get a bag of food that is so small I wouldn’t even bother getting out my bike to haul it home. Riding a bike isn’t just cheaper; it helps create the critical mass necessary to help Americans see that we don’t need to all behave like we are disabled.
Most people won’t ride bikes because they perceive our roads as being too dangerous. Driving a prius does not reduce the danger for cyclists and every car added or bike removed from the roadway increases the perception of the relative danger of traveling under one’s own power as opposed to using a steel-encased fossil-fool powered wheelchair.
So-called environmentalists who drive priuses are indeed hypocrites. Real environmentalists don’t drive!
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I walk and take buses
and my husband drives a Prius. A public-transit commute to work would take him three or four hours a day. Sorry about that.
We researched, and, with the Insight no longer being sold, a Prius gets the best mileage of the hybrids--it's not just that it's more recognizable. Yeah, it only gets ~50 to the previous car's ~30, but it's the best we can do. We hope to convert it to plug-in someday (and if we ever own our own home, the first thing we get for it is solar panels).
Not saying we're not hypocrites in many little ways. But we're trying.
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Tired of this argument
I used to own a Toyota Tundra. I lived in the country. My father owns a farm, so I drove a truck. (And we used it to drive through fields, etc.) It got something like 12-17 miles to the gallon.
I moved to the city. I was embarrassed by my big, stupid truck. I wanted to be greener, put my money where my mouth was, etc. So, I traded my truck in for a Prius.
I did not buy the Prius to 'show off'. I bought the Prius because 1) I wanted to try to reduce my carbon footprint 2) I was demonstrating customer loyalty by hanging in a Toyota (drove them in some form for a really long time) and appreciated the fact that the Toyota product held up in accidents well--had decent customer service--was offering me a great deal for the truck (17.500 sight unseen!)--and had a Prius for sale without any wait. Finally, I loved the little bells and whistles in the Prius (all those buttons), including a really good price that I got for it (23,000 fully loaded).
THAT is why I bought the car. Since then, I've had to hear, over and over again, from people who are also 'green' in some way, mainly right here at Salon, how I must have bought the car to 1) show off 2) brag about my green wonderfulness. Also, I hear erroneous arguments of how the car doesn't actually save much gas, etc. etc. etc.
I get somewhere between 45-55 miles to the gallon on average, unless it's very, very hot outside. I fill up my tank once a month or so for about $20. I drive over 30 miles to some of my jobs, and I'm pregnant so biking is kind of out of the question presently, and the public transportation sucks (3 to 4 hours of commute by a combination of train and bus would get my about twenty miles from one of my workplaces and no closer). The car is the best I can do, really, in the most economical way I can do it. I am sick onto death of hearing how I'm a poser. And always from people who should be realizing that's bullshit. But, the most depressing part of this is how this poser thing is always, and can ONLY BE, speculation.
Is there a way to measure it? NO. No amount of surveying etc. is going to definitively prove why someone bought his or her car. Or, conversely, why someone is riding his or her bike. Or why someone is driving his or her truck. Or walking. And so on. We can guess, of course. We can use anecdotal 'proof.' For example, I have a friend who bikes everywhere. That's great! Of course, he wears his fabulous biking outfit with the sponsor stuff on it, despite not being on a team, and brags incessantly about how fabulously green he is. Sigh. I think he's a bit of an ass. However, that does not lead me to believe he's the norm among those who bike to conserve. That would be dumb of me. Pompous asses exist everywhere, people, bragging about everything.
I'm honestly pretty tired of it. It's not good argumentation. And it's super stupid to put other people down for trying to do the right thing. It simply weakens the overall argument about going more green in the first place if it becomes a "I'm greener than thou" situation. How stupid. And you know what else? It gets picked up by the conservative bunch who say, "Ah, see? Buying a greener car is just so much bullshit anyway. I bet all that other stuff is bullshit, too."
Nice way to discourage those who might do something for the environment but hear that there's no point from the very people who should be encouraging ANY progress in any way possible.
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Sick of it, too
I've had a Prius since 2004. I walk to the store, the Post Office, and everywhere else within 1 1/2 miles of my house. I bike in summer, but I live in a very hilly, very cold area in northern Minnesota, so no way is it safe to take a bike when roads are slippery. So I do drive. And my car, over its lifetime, frigid winters included in this, has averaged 51 mpg.
I'm not perfect. It would be better if I could walk or snowshoe everywhere in winter. Or just stay at home and freeze to death rather than burn fossil fuels to warm myself and my family. But I've done a fair job of keeping my own and my family's energy, water, paper, and other resource consumption very low. And when I do have to drive, often to another state to talk about how saving resources helps birds as well as humans, I have a lovely pleasant drive. Hypocritical? Well, then, hypocrisy rules. I know plenty of people who drive their SUVs more than I drive my Prius, and I don't see them doing anything to reduce their use of anything else, either.
When we bought our car, we couldn't consider the Insight because we often have 3 or 4 people in it. We compared the Civic to the Prius--the Civic wasn't nearly as comfortable, there was less than a $1000 difference in cost, and the Civic got poorer mileage. I didn't give a shit about appearances--the point was to save energy in a nice car. Period.