Sorry, Khuon-- you missed my point. The production of a bicycle and that of a car have radically different amounts of energy usage, esp. when you take into account the energy use after production (in use). You can't even begin to compare them, and you can't use one to excuse the other. If the scale were remotely comparable, maybe. But it's not. What you're left with is a weak, weak argument. Your point about computers is even weaker. You are stretching facts to fit a pre-determined argument. In addition, insisting your opponents meet a hypocrisy-free standard I doubt you yourself could reach is a diversion, and does nothing to further your argument (such as it is). Of course what we do has an environmental impact. Now: do we equate mowing your grass with a self-propelled (ie reel) mower with dumping tons of pollutants into, say, the Androscoggin river (real river, real pollution-- though it has since been cleaned, thank you EPA)? And if I do the first and complain about the second, I am a hypocrite. Nice, if shoddy, rhetoric.

You've also missed the central conciet of my argument-- that this entire talk of SUVs is a MacGuffin for larger problems. And it boils down to this: The automobile has an understandable utility, but that utility is vastly over-used by most people out there, including some reading this board, though I would not pre-suppose to know just who that might be. Might even be me, though my car had less than 200 miles put on it this past summer. I don't think SUVs should shoulder all the blame, they're more a symptom than a cause. They are aesthetically hideous for the most part, I'll say that. But so is most of what we produce.

Then the question becomes: what will we do? I haven't read anyone here proposing banning cars wholesale, but I do think some central cities may start considering banning individual cars in the next ten-fifteen years, probably for largely economic reasons (quickening the movement of goods, less lost time in traffic, etc.). Depends how bad the traffic becomes. I'm not convinced by the depletion of resources argument, this sort of Malthusian thinking has been around too long and been disproven too many times. Although Malthus may apply to the number of cars on the road.

Nor am I convinced by the sunny sorts who pretend to have read Bjorn Lomberg, either, and think we can just go on polluting happily. I've read Lomberg, and that ain't what he says.

Too often the decision to use a car or SUV comes down to the amorphous word "choice," which is used to abrogate responsibility and any sort of actual consideration of the effects of one's actions.