Global Warming and Lifestyle Change

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 "d

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ctive way to screw the marginalized and poor of this planet" (2001. p. 324). It makes them suffer for problems caused by the richer people's bad use of the convenience and status of things like SUVs, and it stops them from getting the social benefit of convenience and status. That point also made by Durning when he makes reference to free parking that gives "employees and customers a big incentive and drives . . . and by spreading out the destinations people want to reach" (2001, p. 331). The expense of global warming is part of Lomborg's argument. He says that the total cost of global warming is $5 trillion (2001). Lomborg does not blame SUVs for everything, but he does include emissions as one part of global warning. An interesting part of Lomborg's argument is that it is different from the arguments of Durning and McKibben. He is not against lifestyle changes, but he says that this is only one part of solving the problem: "we should not spend vast amounts of money to cut a tiny slice of the global temperature increase when this constitutes a poor use of resources" (2001, p. 328). The kind of solution that Durning and McKibben talk about is connected to the UN Climate Panel, or IPCC (p. 327). However, as Lomborg also says, "glo
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Approximate Word count = 1381
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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