Originally Posted by Delta Flyer

I'm not perceptive enough to finger...."you are an induldgent narcassist"....except maybe Paris Hilton. What I do know is on a national scale our energy consumption is unsustainable with plenty example of extravagence.

Retorting "if you really care - go get a bike" and the smug card is both unhelpful and projection. There are not very many walkable or bikeable communities in the US. Nearly everybody can cut back some on energy with little sacrifice.

Originally Posted by Noz

...some poor child dying in Iraq...

Originally Posted by RockMonkey

I firmly believe that the lifestyle of the general population in the middle east is dramatically BETTER because of the world's thirst for oil. A lot more children would be dying, or never be born in the first place, if the world had no use for oil. The middle east doesn't really have much going for it, except they happen to be sitting on a resource that happens to be in great demand right now. Eliminate the demand for oil and just see how many more children in Iraq die (of starvation, most likely). Look at Africa. No widespread resources in great demand, so no money, and for the most part the world looks the other way. A LOT (I mean A LOT) more children are dying in Africa than Iraq.

Originally Posted by rcomeau

Is there a hybrid related question in any of this?

Noz, do you drive? If so, why don't you take a bus or bike? Do live close enough to work to walk or bike?

Originally Posted by worthywads

I'd prefer you explain it, since you're calling freedom crap, and saying freedom is loaded, but use slavery so lightly.

I suggest you read some Friedrich Hayek or Milton Friedman. I see Parenti is big on Hugo Chavez, who isn't so high on freedom of the press, no thanks.

Parenti really thinks Tibet is better off because China invaded?

Parenti predicted that the GOP would retain control in 2006 because powerful corporations now control the electoral results, boy was he wrong.

Originally Posted by Noz

Freedom of the press? You mean press like Fox News? Freedom of make believe?

Parenti also explains how we are now a slave to the system we live in. The corporations run the show...not you. Debt and taxes are your owners...not you. People keep talking about freedom yet I'd bet most people couldn't even define it.

That word has been used as a nationalist prop for so long it's lost any and all meaning.

Originally Posted by Tim

Trying to generalize why a group buys the car they do can't be done. If we try to get into the minds of large SUV owners and start generalizing, we become no better than those in the media who want to generalize that all hybrid owners are tree-hugging environmentalists.

People (who have the means to have choices in the car they buy) buy cars as a reflection of what they value, what they're passionate about, and what they need. You can get a very diverse spectrum of reasons when you combine those three things. Sure, maybe a large SUV owner values excess or just want to show off. Maybe they have a family of 8 and pull a trailer. Maybe they use it for work. There actually are valid reasons for owning one.

Perpetuating this line of thinking that we have the perfect car and have driven to the moral high-ground while everyone else is destroying the planet is exactly the reason why hybrids are portrayed as gimics owned by pretentious snobs with enough money to spend an extra $3000 more on a car just to make a statement. And if you don't think the media portrays us that way, look around at the articles that have been written for the last 7 years.

Maybe if we focused on the benefits of our cars rather than the probem with theirs more people would be drawn to hybrids in the first place. And when we turn the attacks to SUV owners personally, all we do is create a divide and the whole point is lost as we argue who is more superior. We're better off advocates, not critics.

Originally Posted by Shining Arcanine

Saying that there exist cases of something is percentage neutral. I did not say that the majority of pick-up truck and SUV drivers are free from psychological problems. I am quite confident that the majority of pick-up truck and SUV drivers do have psychological problems, just as I am confident that the majority of people in general have psychological problems. If they did not, they would not experience anger.

My personal observations have led me to believe that the majority of people driving SUV and Pick-up truck drivers purchased them to compensate for a lack of self-esteem rather than an actual need that they had.

Originally Posted by Shining Arcanine

If you do not believe me,

Originally Posted by Shining Arcanine

fine, but I believe that so long as this problem is ignored, it will be impossible to get a large percentage of society to consider inherently more fuel efficient vehicles than what they are presently driving and that the percentage of society to which I refer composes the majority of pick-up truck and SUV drivers. If this was not the case, neither would we see people driving pick-up trucks and SUVs regularly en masse as if their vehicles were sedans nor would we see luxury features in them, as luxury features would not be selling points to buyers of these classes of vehicles that do not have psychological issues as an impetus to purchase these vehicles, or more specifically, to be seen driving them.

Originally Posted by Shining Arcanine

Perhaps I am wrong in saying that there is a majority of a SUV and Pick-up truck owners that purchase these vehicles to boost their self-esteem

Originally Posted by Shining Arcanine

and there is only a large minority of SUV and Pick-up truck drivers that purchase these vehicles to boost their sagging self-esteem; however, regardless of which it is, it is too much and in our "it does not matter what you are doing; it just matters what you are seen doing" society, I find anything less than a majority of SUV and pick-up drivers having purchased their vehicles to compensate for their own psychological issues on some level hard to believe.

Edit: Lastly, in the early 1990s, there were very few pick-up trucks and SUVs on the road. They were a rare sight on the road. Today, scarcely a day passes when you do not see one. Unless you believe that people suddenly found a need for these vehicles en masse, you cannot seriously expect others to believe that the large quantities of additional pick-up truck and SUV drivers purchased their vehicles because they had a need for them that previously had gone unfulfilled, especially among the recent overtake of the world's rural population by the world's urban population, the shrinking size of families and the trend of people leaving rural communities to go to more urban ones that has existed in the United States since before the 20th century, all factors which would reduce the actual need and pragmatic desire for these vehicles.