When I came cack to the United States after several years of studying in Belgium in the early 1990s, I was amazed by the number of Americans who had suddenly taken to driving SUVs. After all, in Europe people were more than content to get around in their small, fuel-efficient cars or to use mass transportation if they had to travel longer distances.
Because of the unsustainably low price of gas, however, Americans wanted to drive huge, gas-guzzling monstrosities that would allow them to dominate other drivers on the road (In some cases, the choice of an excessively large SUV may have also been an attempt by some insecure men to make up for inadequacies in other areas...but we can leave that sort of speculation to mental health professionals). In buying these idiotic vehicles, no one ever bothered to think for one moment about the impact that driving an SUV would have on the planet. Nor did many Americans reflect upon the fact that gas prices would eventually have to rise due to diminishing oil reserves and increasing demand for oil from other parts of the world (i.e., China and India). As in the case of the housing crisis, the shortsighted dolts who needed the drive these planet-killing machines deluded themselves into thinking that they could have it all, and that there were no personal or social consequences to be paid for their sheer stupidity and greed.
But now the hens have come home to roost. With gas prices hovering around $4.00 a gallon, all of a sudden soccer moms and their macho suburban husbands have come to realize that their prize SUVs, which in the past had given them such tremendous feelings of power on the road, are actually financial liabilities, threatening to bankrupt their already financially overextended families. And, try as they might, they can't sell these behemoths, because their less shallow countrymen are looking to buy hybrids and other smaller fuel-efficient vehicles in an age where gas prices can only keep increasing. The one consolation that SUV owners still have, however, is that they will still have the biggest and most powerful toys on the road. And spending $100 to fill up your tank is a small price to pay to help SUV owners overcome the feelings of inferiority that led them to buy these idiotic vehicles in the first place. Sometimes size does matter. But that will be a small consolation when it comes to choosing between filling up your SUV at the pump and paying your mortgage. Life really is unfair, isn't it!
