Greenpeace

Alright, so I had to write an editorial for something, and I figured, hell, global warming is really messing with planet earth. I blame SUVs for a huge portion of it.

So here's my editorial (I got my facts from: www.suv.org):

“That’s massive”. No, for once, this line isn’t being used to describe America’s ever growing waste line. Instead, it is being used to describe the ever increasing size of the cars we drive in America, specifically SUVs.

            No other car has damaged our environment as badly as SUVs. It’s not just the fact that they spew out 75% more toxins (nitrogen oxides) than most cars, or the fact that they rarely get above 19 mpg; it’s the fact that there are so many. America seems to be obsessed with large objects. SUVs are no exception.

            One thing that isn’t large though is our wallets. We’re getting scammed at the pump, and to make it worse, we’re just taking it. Gas prices are at record highs. That’s strange. Gas and oil companies are reporting record profits. You’d think that profits in the hundreds of millions would be enough for anyone, but for some reason, these companies continually get in bed with the Bush administration to ensure that SUVs don’t undergo stricter EPA requirements. Ever wonder why none of the car companies (besides Lexus) has ever tried to improve the MPG of their SUVs? Everyone is teamed up against the consumer. They couldn’t care less about the environment, and they certainly couldn’t care less about you.

            SUVs are horrible for the environment. Aside from the fact that they waste gas, they pollute far more than most normal sized cars (like a sedan). They spew out 30% more carbon monoxide and 75% more nitrogen oxides than normal cars. This essentially defeats the purpose of an SUV, which is for them to be driven in places that one cannot drive a normal car, like in the forest. Unfortunately, these poisons increase the planet’s temperature and will result in damage to the forests.
            Now, forests are one thing, but most people, even environmentalists, put themselves first. It’s humans above all. It’s sad, but that’s the way it is. So typically, the only way to persuade someone to act on something is to explain how it may just kill them, or make them go broke. In that case, this should be an argument in which 100% of people agree on. SUVs have a huge impact on climate change which in turn has an impact on us. The World Health Organization has estimated that 150,000 people are dying every year from climate change. That is almost as much as the Bosnian genocide (which we also ignored for a while).

             People need to understand that we cannot let this stand. People are dying because a group of people made bad decisions in what they drive. It’s as simple as choosing a different car, but this is America, and in America, we don’t like to listen to anyone else’s ideas. Global warming seems like a mythical beast that looms far off in the distance, if we don’t get too close to it, then it won’t hurt us. That’s our train of thought, and it’s wrong. Dead wrong. Global warming is coming to a point where it is irreversible. That’s bad. Really bad.

            People tend to think of global warming as something that’s really “not so bad”. It’s the “Who cares if it warms up a little bit? I like it warm” mantra. Now, if it simply got a few degrees warmer and stopped, it wouldn’t be so bad, but that’s not the case. SUVs aren’t going to one day just decide to stop raising the temperature. It’s like winter when you’re sitting inside your house. You decide to light a fire to get warm, but you never sit right next to it, that’d be painful, it’d burn. It’s no different here, except unlike your fireplace, which you can move away from, once global warming takes effect, we don’t get to move away, we get scorched. There’s no second chance.

            Gas, a product of oil, is obviously needed in order for us to be able to fuel our cars. When massive cars like SUVs guzzle gas the way they do, we must then find a new source of oil. Unfortunately, this typically means that oil companies must drill in our national parks which often have oil hidden beneath them. When we are forced to drill in these protected areas, everything is destroyed. In fact, not only are all the trees, plants, and animals cleared out, the area becomes a wasteland from the hazardous byproducts that come from the machinery used, the chemicals involved, etc. If we continue on this path, the rate of extinction will increase, as will the human death rate.

            We could stop all this. We might even be capable of reversing it. We will never get rid of air pollution, humans are just too stubborn, but we can slow it down. Wiping these horrid machines from the face of the earth would be a huge help to our environment that we depend on and abuse at the same time. We love to be the liberators, the people who bring relief to others, so imagine how we’d feel if we knew that as a country, that we were saving 150,000 people every year. We’d be heroes, and perhaps the world would hate us just a little less. But until then, we’ll be responsible for the preventable killings of 150,000 people per year.  

 Yeah so that's basically it.