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Climate activists "ticket" 15,000
SUVs across region
Mike Tidwell of the Chesapeake Climate
Action Network "tickets" a corpulent SUV stretch
limo along Rockville Pike. Activists say Detroit could fight
global warming with more efficient engines.
In the largest-ever regional
campaign of its kind, a coalition of 29 groups ranging from
consumer advocates to prestigious religious organizations
placed educational "tickets" on 15,000 sport utility
vehicles in the Baltimore/Washington region on July 19.
The goal of the campaign, involving 150 volunteers from across
the region, was to pressure Detroit to build better SUVs that
"protect public health, enhance national security, and
spare our planet from the potentially catastrophic crisis
of rapid global warming," according to Mike Tidwell of
the Takoma Park-based Chesapeake Climate Action Network.
Gathering outside of the Century Ford dealership in Rockville
and Jerry's Chevrolet in Baltimore, leaders of the campaign
stressed that this was a "solution-oriented" effort
designed to educate SUV owners, not alienate them.
According to the coalition, switching from an average car
to a large SUV, for example, increases a family's annual energy
use to the equivalent of leaving their refrigerator door open
for six years. But independent studies show that Detroit,
using existing technology, could readily build 34 mpg SUVs
without sacrificing safety or performance and while saving
American drivers billions of dollars at the gas pump.
"We simply want SUV drivers to know that Detroit is
ripping them off," said Tidwell, chief organizer of the
campaign. "SUV drivers don't want to cause unhealthy
'Code Red' smog days. They don't want to give kids asthma.
They don't want to trigger perilous global warming. But by
not offering the choice of better vehicles, Detroit guarantees
that American SUVs do all three."
The bright yellow "tickets" came with pre-printed
postcards that SUV drivers could detach and send to General
Motors and the Ford Motor Company challenging them to build
cleaner-burning SUVs now, using technology that the automakers
themselves admit is readily available. The tickets also encouraged
SUV drivers to buy wind power to offset their current tailpipe
emissions.
"Minimizing our impact on Earth is not a choice, but
a moral and spiritual obligation," said Rabbi Fred Scherlinder
Dobb of Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda.
"This campaign shows SUV drivers how to lessen or offset
the impacts of their vehicles now, and to advocate for better
and cleaner vehicles down the road."
A major concern of campaign leaders is the growing crisis
of global warming and what it could mean for the Maryland/Virginia/D.C.
area.
"Unless we dramatically clean up our energy use soon,
global warming in this region is projected by scientists to
degrade ecosystems, seriously disrupt agriculture, and trigger
potentially catastrophic sea-level rise," Tidwell said.
The average SUV on the road today emits 40 percent more global
warming pollution than the average car, according to the Union
of Concerned Scientists. And SUVs contribute enormously to
our region's rapidly worsening air quality, emitting 47 percent
more smog-forming exhaust than an average car. The result
is that Washington and Baltimore are in "severe non-attainment"
of the federal Clean Air Act, and are thus vulnerable to losing
tens of millions of dollars in federal transit and highway
funds. At the same time, childhood asthma rates are skyrocketing
across the region and 3,900 Marylanders are hospitalized each
year for respiratory ailments linked to poor air quality.
Twenty percent of all global warming pollution (i.e. carbon
dioxide) in America comes from vehicles, with SUVs rapidly
pushing that number higher and higher, according to the Sierra
Club. Indeed, the carbon dioxide emmitted by American alone
exceeds the total CO2 emissions of any country on earth except
China, Russia, Japan, and the U.S.
For more information call the Chesapeake Climate Action
Network at 301-920-1633 (office) or 240-460-5838 (cell) or
visit www.chesapeakeclimate.org.
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