SUVs and Global Warming

Auto-industry advertising portraysSUVs as the ticket to freedom and thegreat outdoors. Commercials depictthem climbing massive snow-cappedmountains or tearing through desert sand dunes, taking their owners into the wild. In reality, the only off-road action many of thesevehicles see is accidentally driving through a flower bed next to the driveway.Missing from these ads are other contributions from SUVs—the brown haze of air pollution hanging over many of our nationalparks, images of weather disasters linked to global warming or the oil derricks and tankers needed to feed gas-guzzling SUVs. Incontrast to Detroit’s carefully crafted image, SUVs have a dark side. They spew out 43 percent more global-warming pollution and 47percent more air pollution than an average car. SUVs are four times more likely than cars to roll over in an accident and three timesmore likely to kill the occupants in a rollover.