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Flashback 2000: Greenpeace Exec Dir John Passacantando on SUV’s: ‘They’re like bell-bottoms. They’ll go away and we’ll laugh at them’ 

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.”

Rev your SUVs! Global Warming To Save The Planet?: Will rising levels of CO2 prevent a new Ice Age & save civilization?

SUV sales boom: Detroit Three post big gains as consumers fled sedans and embraced SUVs — ‘Prospering because they are selling giant, Obama-hated, gas-guzzling SUVs like hotcakes’

Penn State Prof Thinks SUVS Ended The Ice Age: ‘Arctic ice sheet has been melting at a decreasing rate for 15,000 years, since Chicago was buried a mile deep. No doubt it was all started by Hummer’

Lund University academic: ‘To Halt Climate Change, We Need an Ecological Leninism’ – ‘State power should definitely be used’ to ban SUVs & private jets

Electric Vehicles ‘being outstripped by the popularity of SUVs’ – Electric cars ‘represent less than a tenth of 1% of the 1.1 billion cars’

Paper: NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio is ‘ a climate fanatic who takes three SUVs to the gym’

Flashback 1980: Paul Ehrlich calls oil ‘a resource which we know damn well is going to be gone in 20 or 30 years’ (By year 2000 or 2010)

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