This is just insane. Not only are cars themself mostly unnecessary, if the right infrastructure is provided, but SUVs also use more resources to run and be produced then small cars, without any advantage over them. So an obvious waste, which could easily be cut to reduce emissions.
Source IEA: https://www.iea.org/commentaries/suvs-are-setting-new-sales-records-each-year-and-so-are-their-emissions
Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding this but weren't the SUVs already calculated in the countries' bars? Of course something globally combined that burns fuel is going to be significant. I imagine sedans and coupes wouldn't be very far behind. This smacks of a "Statistically, everyone has one testicle" type of thing.
Are we just picking out things that we can add to the graph? Like, can I choose farts or barbques?
Can we show the emissions from industries like plastics?
This.
Not for the sake of being green... but for the fact that plastic is a endocrine disruptor, we're phasing out all things plastic for glass as best we can.
Fk plastic.
This is such a difficult thing to do. Replaced baggies with reusable silicone. Use only glass or ceramic dishes. Use reusable bags at the grocery store. Got little reusable fruit and vegetable bags so I'm not using the disposable bags at the grocery.
But at the end of the day, goddamn every food or product I buy comes wrapped in plastic one way or the other, and there's little I can do about that.
i recently learned something fun, there's a way of polymerizing blood to turn it into plastic. I'm not sure if that fits in with the overall theme of this comment thread, or if it's relevant in any way. I just have to share that knowledge.
Agreed. I'd love to also see how this was calculated, but the graph doesn't make me want to click on the link tbh.
My (and hopefully most other's too) hatred for SUV's is already maxxed out anyway.
*Edit: ok, my curiosity won and I clicked it and saw that it was done by IEA... Literally one of my favourite organisations that don't tend to come up with junk data or conclusions. It's a good read.
Good point. I wonder how big of a bar "meat production" would be. If you include shipping and all other ways it contributes to emissions I wouldn't be surprised if it outweighs consumer vehicles.
That would be my uneducated guess as well. Taking everything like processing, shipping, storing, growing the feed and all it requires into account for meat production, I would be shocked if it weren't higher than passenger vehicles combined.
Say you remove SUVs from the other countries' calculations. That would make SUVs look even worse.
Or perhaps you begin arbitrarily counting other things twice in your calculations. Then they look better.
My point isn't that item X doesn't pollute, just that the graph in question is less useful in it's nature and aimed at being alarmist.
Examples?
I was responding to this comment. If you remove the SUVs' calculations from other bars then the others get smaller relative to SUVs and make SUVs look worse.
They either kept SUVs in or they didn't. If they kept them in (counted twice) It makes SUVs look less polluting (see above). If they didn't count them twice then it would be more accurate and make SUVs look more polluting.
Therefore, it doesn't matter whether they counted SUVs twice or not because it doesnt make their calculations "look better".
I don't see it as alarmist at all. Rather, it's demonstrating how much emissions come from SUVs. As seen by other comments on this post, it sparks dialogue about less carbon intensive alternatives to SUVs which are exceedingly common.
That's kind of the point. People naturally imagine that there are much greater contributions and that there's no way a minor choice like an SUV over a compact has major consequences. But this graph does demonstrate that such a decision matters.