Car companies did not create the idea that having a rough, tough vehicle to go into the country was cool. They simply recognized and repeated a message which was in the air.

The first time I saw a Willys Jeep (when I was 5) or a Dodge Power Wagon (at 18), I recognized cool. Obviously I was not the only one. You can characterize popular tastle like that as shallow but I don’t think you can say it’s a fabrication of Big Capital.

John is suggesting that we move ahead more quickly by taxing up the price of fossil fuels. We should have done that long ago before the market moved in. I think that time has passed. Now we will need to figure out how to survive the winter.

What’s the ratio of SUV ads featuring mountains, deserts, jungles (or all of the above) to those featuring the streets of Manhattan? Funny, I don’t see much in the way of downtown city streets here, for example:

http://www.jeep.com/jeep_life/index.html

Now it may well be that plenty of drivers in Manhattan want to think of themselves (and be thought of) as people who live the ‘jeep life’ on weekends, but that’s a different issue.

But they did. The SUV is distinct from an actual useful 4WD like the old Landrovers or Land Cruisers. Had you ever ridden in one of those, you’d know the difference..

Distinct in your mind, maybe—but to the general public, they’re all one category, and that is what matters here.

Advertising IS a magic wand, and the car companies continue to wave it furiously.

And usually too little effect unless the advertising is well aligned with the cultural zeitgeist.

But they did. The SUV is distinct from an actual useful 4WD like the old Landrovers or Land Cruisers. Had you ever ridden in one of those, you’d know the difference..

Advertising IS a magic wand, and the car companies continue to wave it furiously.

What the hell does that have to do with the fact that over the last 10 years they’ve suddenly been marketed as the ideal vehicle for cruising the streets of Manhattan?

Pffft. What planet do you live on? Jeeps have been around since WWII. And how long have Land Rovers have been roving about the African Savanna and the Australian Outback? And what do all the NGOs drive around the 3rd world—white Toytota Priuses? Or white Toyota Land Cruisers?

No, the car companies didn’t create the association between SUVs, exotic locales, and adventure. It’s certainly true that they have used (and, in doing so, reinforced) those themes in their advertising, but they did not create them. And they certainly don’t have the power to arbitrarily replace them by redefining what people find cool and what they find uncool.

Uh… what world do you live in? Car companies are the ones that MADE those images, through years of television advertising campaigns. That association doesn’t come around because of the inherent ruggedness of an SUV. No one looks at a Ford “Explorer” (think the choice of name has any associated propaganda tropes?) and thinks, “Oh. Kayaking. Of course.” Car companies marketed SUVs because they are big, expensive vehicles and represented a new market that they could bust open – by changing the fashion, they could sell a whole round of new cars. So they did, by running not-so-subtle nature-cum-extreme-sports-themed SUV ads ‘round the clock on TV. They could very well indeed change it back.

Nope, everyone is goanna wait 5 years to see how the plant in Oman goes.

This is a game-theory problem. All consumers want someone else to lose the money proving up the alternates to cheap, easy liquids – this applies as much to countries as it does to companies or consumers.

Net result is nobody does nothing.

If oil stays high long enough to convince everybody that $50+ oil is here to stay, then everybody isn’t going to do nothing, because big profits (not losses) are going to be there for those who take some risks and develop new capacities first.

Oh, brother. The idea that there are ‘those behind the scenes’ (Auto industry execs) who ‘trick’ people into wanting things is absurd. Do you think GM ‘tricked’ people into wanting SUVs and could, if it chose, ‘trick’ people into wanting something else next year? Ridiculous. GM can’t reliably trick, convince or even bribe people to want what it’s making. People don’t drive SUVs and pickups to “surmount the wreckage of social disintegration”, they drive them because they think they’re cooler in an SUV than an Accord or a minivan or a GEO Metro. Why cooler? Because SUVs are associated with ruggedness, with casualness, with the great outdoors, with African safaris, with energetic youthful activities like mountain biking and whitewater kayaking. Think GM or any automaker could wave a wand and make all that go away? Replace it all with a different version of cool? They’d love to have anything like that kind of power—but they just don’t.

And I’m correct, I believe, in pointing out that well-intentioned price raising won’t defer the consequences of petroleum-damnage as long as the automobile industry is the largest in the world, and especially as long as it’s the largest industry in the US. And oil its consort.

The auto industry isn’t going anywhere—it may not be based on internal combustion gas engines in coming decades, but cars are here to stay.

Your skewering of fuel-hypocrisy is fine with me – my last car was a 3 cylinder Geo, my current transport is a 21-speed bicycle.

And your flying habits?

You’re correct of course that $2.50 a gallon is a little hyperbolic unless it’s adjusted for inflation, except of course that the price of gas and its rise is one of the main engines driving that inflation.
And I’m correct, I believe, in pointing out that well-intentioned price raising won’t defer the consequences of petroleum-damnage as long as the automobile industry is the largest in the world, and especially as long as it’s the largest industry in the US. And oil its consort.
Your skewering of fuel-hypocrisy is fine with me – my last car was a 3 cylinder Geo, my current transport is a 21-speed bicycle.
And for what it’s worth – it’s important to remember that evil isn’t its symptoms – evil is selfishness, pure and simple; degree and effect make it more or less visible, that’s all.

Slope? or cliff? 2

Oh, brother. How about a more prosaic explanation? Say $2.50 a gallon is still not all that high on an inflation-adjusted, historical basis? And as for motivation, why do we need anything other than fashion—or do you also hypothesize that short skirts and belly shirts help teenage girls “surmount the wreckage of social disintegration” and that when long skirts come back into fashion those, in their turn, will help tomorrow’s teenageers “surmount the wreckage of social disintegration”?

The house next door is for sale and some people just came to look at it. The realtor drove a Cadillac SUV, one of the potential buyers drove a Jeep SUV, and the other drove a Chevrolet full-size pickup with a hard shell camper on it. Each vehicle sole-occupied by its driver.
Gas around here costs $2.50 a gallon.
That’s a quintuple, no? – I have unlimited respect for rational minds, but this is demon-time evil, not economic waywardness.

As for the ‘demonic’ character of those drivers, do me a favor, will you—calculate the carbon footprint of the two following choices:

1. Ferrying your family of 4 around for 12,000 miles in year in an 17MPG Ford Explorer rather than a 25MPG Honda Accord.

2. Taking your family of 4 on a 12,000 mile round-trip transatlantic summer vacation.

Who are the evil, planet-destroying pigs here—the knuckle-dragging Explorer drivers or the sophisticated European vacationers? Let’s do the math. 12,000 miles at 25MPG is 480 gallons vs 706 gallons at 17MPG or an additional 226 gallons. Now what about our jet-setting family? 12,000 miles at 40 seat-miles-per-gallon is 300 gallons of jet fuel…EACH! 1200 gallons total for the four. An 8-day vacation with more than FIVE TIMES the impact of the decision to drive the Explorer instead of the Accord for a year.

And, no, I don’t own and SUV—but I do get tired of the sanctimonious SUV-drivers-are-demon-spawn attitude from people who don’t give a second thought to hopping on a fuel-sucking monster and flying halfway around the world to schmooze, or get a nice tan in the winter, or wander through a few old castles and museums.