The best way Americans can change their lifestyles in order to combat global warming and the depletion of nonrenewable resources is to become more realistic and reasonable about their consumption choices. That means rejecting products that are popular because of marketing reasons only. Instead, when they buy a product, they should make sure that it is in proportion to their actual needs. This is because such products use up natural resources needlessly, and that contributes to global warming.
There are practical and easy ways of rejecting products that contribute to global warming. One is to reject SUVs as regular family cars. As McKibben states: "SUVs essentially are machines for burning fossil fuel that just happen to also move you and your stuff around" (2001, p. 325). McKibben calls them "a perfect symbol" of global warming. Their popularity shows up in everyday life in big cities. However, other kinds of vehicles would be just as effective at providing transportation. McKibben's idea is that people should become more outspoken about global warming and that it "has to become a political issue" (p. 326). That fits with the idea of rejecting products such as SUVs.
SUVs are also part of another problem related to global warming, and that problem is "the land of the free parking place" (Durning, 2001, p. 330). Durning makes the argument that wide open spaces of parking lots encourage people to think that driving cars does not cause them any trouble. However, free parking "drives an array of national concerns: not just rising fuel prices but also global climate change . . . and worsening urban smog" (p. 330). It fits with McKibben's argument because it shows that people make the wrong things important to their lives.
The trouble is that SUVs are symbols of wealth and social status. People who drive the SUV show that they are in a higher social class than people who drive ordinary cars. The way that is obvious is that SUVs were ...