The negative impact on the climate from passenger vehicles, which is considerable, could have dropped by more than 30% over the past decade if not for the world’s appetite for large cars, a new report from the Global Fuel Economy Initiative suggests.
Sport utility vehicles, or SUVs, now account for more than half of all new car sales across the globe, the group said, and it’s not alone. The International Energy Agency, using a narrower definition of SUV, estimates they make up nearly half.
Over the years these cars have gotten bigger and so has their cost to the climate, as carbon dioxide emissions “are almost directly proportional to fuel use” for gas-powered cars. The carbon that goes in at the pump comes out the tailpipe.
Transportation is responsible for around one-quarter of all the climate-warming gases that come from energy, and much of that is attributable to passenger transport, according to the International Energy Agency.
Huge cars are a problem enough in the U.S., which has fairly modern, and thus wide, streets. I don’t know how people can even drive around on narrow medieval European roads with those.
Too many. In Europa it’s the same. Around 30% of new cars are SUV‘s. And it’s not the people, it’s the corporations that drive this trend. They earn more on this huge cars. (And silently killed all small cheap cars. Only China is building small cheap cars) And guess what the industry whisperers say, what the solution to this is?
Buy even more SUV‘s. That is the solution!!! Ahem, of course they’re electric. But keep buying big costly cars!
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To be fair here, you can’t compare statistics well internationally. What nowadays already counts as and SUV (or even as a specially created mini SUV) in some countries is rediculous.
Indeed. Some European SUV‘s are called as such for marking purposes only