Tuesday, October 07, 2003
By David Suzuki
Out walking our dog one morning, I found my neighbor washing a brand new SUV. We live in a the heart of Vancouver, and my neighbor and his wife are retired and live in a small condo. I simply couldn't understand how an urban dweller could rationalize laying out so much money for a vehicle that is not only polluting but expensive to fuel up and a pain in the neck to park.
"You don't need an SUV," I growled at him. We're friends and I said it jocularly, but he turned and replied, "It's not for me. It's for my grandson." He wanted his grandson to be "safe."
I walked away stunned. Now that SUVs and trucks have become so popular, people justify them as a safety issue. Never mind that they are so tall that the center of gravity makes them more vulnerable to rollovers or that a side collision is especially damaging to SUVs: The size confers a sense of security.
I believe his answer illustrates why we have a global eco-crisis. We live in a world in which we tackle immediate problems that are merely symptoms of underlying causes.
It may well be that an SUV provides greater protection against collision with another SUV, but these large vehicles consume more fuel than cars and therefore spew much more of the pollution that causes smog and climate change. This will have vast repercussions for my neighbor's grandson and his entire generation.
A few days later, I had to fly to the northern B.C. town of Smithers to meet a television crew. As we approached the town, I was shocked to see a sea of red from horizon to horizon. This was a forest that should have been a luxurious green but instead had been converted to dead and dying trees as far as the eye could see. It is a massive area infected by mountain pine beetles.
This disaster has been...(Read on in: Focus on symptoms obscures underlying problems)
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