October 2000 Salon article interview of the newly incoming executive director of Greenpeace, John Passacantando, about 3/4s down the page in this 2800 words+ fluff piece:
https://www.salon.com/2000/10/23/globalwarming/
… there are all those ugly SUVs out there — a testament to public indifference in the face of a problem that, if we are to believe the scientists, could practically destroy our world. According to a recent study by the Sierra Club, the U.S. could be using a million fewer barrels of oil every day if SUVs, minivans and pickup trucks got the same mileage that cars do. …
But Passacantando, surprisingly, is not overly concerned about them. With oil prices rising and more attention being focused on vehicular safety issues, he ultimately expects the trend to pass. “I view the SUV trend as a bad stylistic choice,” he says. “They’re like bell-bottoms. They’ll go away and we’ll laugh at them. Ten years from now we’ll see them in retro movies.
“In my opinion, the markets are going to take care of that,” he adds. “These vehicles are unstable and wickedly unsafe and to drop $80 at the gas pump to fill your Suburban will at some point be either financially impossible or downright embarrassing to most people.”
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Related:
NYT: Rise of S.U.V.s: Leaving Cars in Their Dust, With No Signs of Slowing – May 21, 2020: “S.U.V.s made up 47.4 percent of U.S. sales in 2019 with sedans at 22.1 percent,” said Tom Libby, automotive analyst at IHS Markit. “By 2025, we see the light-truck segment that includes S.U.V.s, vans and pickups to make up 78 percent of sales compared to 72 percent now.”
‘Sales of Obamacars like the Fiat 500 and Chevy Volt moved like cold porridge’
The 7m to 8m Electric Vehicles (EVs) that should be on the road by the end of 2019 represent less than a tenth of 1 per cent of the 1.1bn cars and other light vehicles that use internal combustion engines. Some 85m ICE vehicles were sold worldwide in 2018. The even more telling fact is that the growth of EVs is being exceeded by the much more rapid growth in the number of SUVs. After growth of over 20 per cent a year earlier in the decade, the global demand for SUVs is now stabilising but at a high level of market share. In the US, SUVs account for 45 per cent of new car sales. But the trend is not limited to the US. In Europe SUVs take 34 per cent of new sales, in China 42 per cent and in India 23 per cent.
Paper: NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio is ‘ a climate fanatic who takes three SUVs to the gym’
Ehrlich 1980: ‘Do we really want to threaten to blow up the world over a resource which we know damn well is going to be gone in 20 or 30 years anyway?’
‘Every country is now overpopulated.’
‘There is a finite pie. The more mice you have nibbling at it the smaller every mouses’ share.’
