Critical Thinking: Don't get a Prius.

[substitute]

The hybrid car is a lie. Do not purchase one.

1. The only reason the hybrid car exists is to allow auto manufacturers to continue selling grossly wasteful and polluting vehicles to consumers. Because California law requires an overall emissions target and minimum quantity of zero emissions vehicles, a manufacturer has to sell hybrid or electric powered vehicles in order to continue selling large commercial trucks to consumers as toys, and other sins.
   
   
2. Purchasing a hybrid vehicle pays off the owner's conscience in the best American way: with a unique product. The buyer feels a sense of moral superiority, the seller makes some money, and the essential problem continues. It's no wonder the name of the most popular one sounds like "pious."
   
   
3. Buying a hybrid car means buying a new car. Don't buy a new car. It's true that as your hybrid car runs it will put less direct pollutant material in the air and water. It's also true that it will use less gasoline. However, you have just bought a very large machine which was manufactured new. Add up the steel and aluminum, the machining and casting of parts, the chemicals used and dumped, the nonrenewable resources consumed or used to build the car, all the energy used to build a car and carry its materials around, the energy used to move the car around by ship and truck to the dealer, all of it. Making a car is a very top heavy resource-hungry industrial process.
   
   And your car doesn't go away. Unless you have it artfully crushed into a cube as a coffee table, or personally supervise its recycling, your car is sold to another person and stays on the road. And that person's car is sold down the line too, until we arrive at unusable or junked cars, which then go to a graveyard to be broken down. Everything about the car is toxic too, just in case you're curious.
   
   So now you've brought a new car into the world (they'll make more!) and given a nice big fat gut punch to Mother Nature in doing so. Failure.
   
   
4. Keep your old car instead. If it's not so run down that the mileage is shot, and it's passing the emissions tests, it's a better deal for "the planet" and for you also. It is not as demonstrative of your love for the GREEN GAIA to continue with your serviceable older car, but trust me, she appreciates it.
   
   
5. nstead, do things that don't burn fuel, or burn less. If you're physically able, ride a bike more to short drives. Use public transit. Even in Southern Californian Heck, where I live, I can (and now I do) take the train into Los Angeles when I am able.
   
   
6. It will be a great day for this country when Americans can look at a serious problem and do something other than pick up a lifestyle magazine and look for some product guides. Buying things is a terrible solution to so many things.

Comments

You can't buy the strategy you don't have

[mr-flippant.livejournal.com]

This seems like a reasonable list and I agree with the theme...but I take issue with #3.

It's true that there are other viable transit options in many situations...even in SoCal. And as peak oil, pollution, gridlock and personal finance become larger issues, we will probably see more people driving (oh crap, a pun) improvements to our transit systems and land use policies. We are already seeing hints of changes to the established way of thinking with the declining appeal of suburban life. The road worshipping philosophies of Robert Moses, at least up here in crunchy Seattle, are also becoming less and less common.

But until we have a system of commerce and transportation that supports these values, we have to deal with an infrastructure that was not developed with them in mind. And I wonder if the issue isn't knotted enough that blacklisting a vehicle, that pollutes less, because of a disingenuous manufacturer washes over some of that complexity.

Re: You can't buy the strategy you don't have

[substitute.livejournal.com]

I'm blacklisting an idea, not a car. the Idea is: Buy a new car to make things better.

Re: The good is the enemy of the best

[mr-flippant.livejournal.com]

Fair enough...I took the title too literally.

But, even if the hybrid exists so that car companies can sell their gas guzzlers too, it seems like the problem is not with the hybrids. The problem is still the sale of the gas-guzzlers that the hybrid enables. It's still demand for irrationally large vehicles that serve fashion rather than function. It's still CAFE standards that have not been appropriately adjusted to discourage the sale of these vehicles. And so on.

I hear you on the need to drive less, use mass transit, ride a bike, walk more...but we will need time to adapt urban/suburban environments to support those activities. It looks like our record gas prices are encouraging this change in non-trivial ways so maybe $12.00/gallon gas will encourage faster progress.

The well educated with disposable income will choose their cars until they are presented with viable alternatives or until they face undesirable circumstances that motivate them to change.

Re: The good is the enemy of the best

[substitute.livejournal.com]

Hypocrisy is the debt vice pays to virtue.

I maintain that the hybrids are actively a problem because they make no sense for the manufacturer except as a fig leaf for their real business selling very damaging vehicles. If the hybrids were a substantial portion of their output, or weren't heavily subsidized, that would be interesting.

Buying a new hybrid rather than staying with used efficient gas cars puts more money in the system, uses more resources, gives them an ad on wheels for their ploy, and soothes the buyer into thinking they did something right. If you hold back your new car money until MOST of the cars are PZEV and efficient, they have to pay more attention, no?

The well educated with disposable income should stop buying cars for a while. Nothing would scare these guys like Joe Six Pack buying used and Professor Phd doing the same. Acres of unsold Priuses and Tacomas makes change.