Nuclear power has negligible risk. It kills fewer people than mining coal does, and it also releases alot of air pollution. It's hardly the best solution, but we don't live in a perfect world. In a perfect world, wind an solar power would be enough. But I'm a grown up about those things.
Well, you are wrong, alot of people do replace SUV's with Priuses. Ever heard of Arianna Huffington? She's a columnist or something (I don't read op-eds alot, but I saw her on C-Span once), but apparrently she used to drive a Lincoln Navigator but now drives a Prius and she has some kind of anti-SUV campaign. If gas hits 3 dollars a gallon, which it could in the next few years, alot of people, especially working folks who aren't rich, are going to be interested in saving gas.
The Prius has alot of room, enough cargo space, although it's probably not up to your needs. The Ford Escape Hybrid might be, though. It can tow several tons, it does have AWD as an option, although it might have problems with a large enough trailer. Toyota is also comming out with a midsize SUV hybrid.
Who Says Cars Aren't an Investment 4135No reason it couldn't at least theoretically. And while nuclear energy is not renewable, it's practically infinite. Therefore, the energy needed to make an automobile is negligible, if you are including powering the factory, machinery...
Golf 1.8t is a "muscle box", hardly an econobox. The standard Golf is around ten seconds, maybe more for the automatic.
Acceleration is relative. Only a few decades ago, sports cars had that kind of acceleration these "econoboxes" you are lambasting have. Why do people need more to just go get groceries and pick up their little beasts at school?
Well, maybe you don't care about fuel economy. Maybe you don't care about environmentalism. Some people do. When you see 4 bad hurricanes right after another, and the weather experts saying its caused by unusually high water temperatures in the Carribean, well, you no longer have look around hard to find proof of all this global warming stuff. It's no longer academic. And I don't want to be part of the culture that causes that kind of destruction. At some point I have to put my foot down and try every way I can to reject that kind of thoughtless disregard, even if it doesn't matter . At least my conscience will be clean.
