Mindless consumerism
Ireland’s embrace of mindless consumerism continues to escalate. The latest example of this is our new found taste for buying SUV’s. I know people have to drive to work and drop the little brats off to school, but to do it in such a pointlessly over sized vehicle is ridiculous.
For a country that likes to criticise the Americans for their waste of natural resources and not signing up to environmental treaties like Kyoto, and also George bush’s ‘war for oil’, this is a prime example of gross hypocrisy. In fact, we are worse than the Americans - it’s not our kids who are being shipped off to the Middle East to fight for the oil, it is somebody else’s. We just happen to reap the benefits, while American kids come back in boxes or with missing limbs.
With the ferocious storms that have been sweeping across Europe this week, everybody should be well aware of the issue of global warming, so ignorance of the damage to the environment from pointless waste is no longer an excuse.
SUV’s are of course marketed as being ‘safer’, which has more to do with marketing hype than actual reality. As anyone who is acquainted with the basic laws of physics will understand, SUV’s aren’t actually as safe as they are made out to be:
- SUV’s have a higher centre of gravity, which makes them more likely to tip over.
- They have a greater mass than the average sized car, which increases their momentum, which in turn means their braking distance is a lot longer.
- Due to their higher bonnet and increased bulk, they are a greater menace to pedestrians and people who happen to be driving smaller vehicles if hit by SUV’s
- Their larger profile makes them more difficult to manoeuver in tight spots and can obstruct the drivers view.
The only level on which I think SUV is make any sense is to better facilitate hauling our increasingly fat arses around the place on our increasingly clogged up road system. With over 20 percent of the population now considered clinically obese, the extra horsepower and more rugged suspension is probably much needed.