One reaction to global warming stories, as I wrote earlier ('Sex and the SUV' ), is a strident defense of the SUV as representing freedom of choice. The other common reaction is to deny that the SUV has anything to do with, well, anything really. Here, for example, on the May 24 CNN Headline News show, is Glenn Beck - 'I think I even buy into, you know, global climate change. I just don't think that my SUV is necessarily the cause of it'.
But nobody thinks, or has said, that Beck's SUV is the sole cause of global warming. When I use the term 'SUV' I do so not because consigning SUVs to the trash can of history will stop polar ice caps melting, not as an end in itself, but a symbol of the waste and excess that has to be cut back generally. All cars have to be smaller and more efficient and there has to be far fewer of them, traveling smaller distances. Everyone has to be careful with home consumption - turning off unused lights (and using low energy bulbs), turning off unused appliances (not leaving on standby), buying local food products, not those transported from the other side of the world, and so on. And outside the home - reducing airline use, for example, and encouraging big companies to turn of the lights in their buildings at night, and find ways to conserve energy in their operations. In addition, of course, there needs to be a massive government/energy company funded program to develop solar, wind, geothermal and tidal renewable energy sources, for use in every home and in every power station.
So, no, getting rid of Mr Beck's SUV will not in itself 'solve' the problem. But while they and all the other massive cars on the road are still consuming petrol, and still represent a metaphorical giving the finger to the rest of the world - stuff you, I will do what I like - then there seems no hope of the kind of massive change needed in western societies to combat the threat to our planet. It needs a change of attitude and direction comparable to the way people and industry swung into action in World War Two. Can you imagine the reaction if someone then had insisted on driving a massive vehicle to the local shops and saying - 'I don't care whether I am wasting oil needed for the troops or not, I will do what I like'?
It would have been unthinkable then, it should be unthinkable now.