DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

This has been around for a while, but merits a repeat.

Driving a 13mpg SUV for a year rather than a 22mpg car will waste more energy than if you:

• left your refrigerator door open for 6 years
• left your color television turned on for 28 years
• left your bathroom light burning for 30 years

That’s not multiple-choice, friends.

The source: Sierra Club’s report on Global Warming & SUVs.

I think these numbers are great, because lots of SUV owners probably take care to turn off lights and close the refrigerator door. These people aren’t dumb… they maybe don’t have all the pertinent facts about the consequences of their choices, though. Or maybe they really need an SUV. I mean, SUVs are really great in snow, right?

One way SUV owners might learn these sad facts, if they’re not smart or attractive enough to read debris.com regularly, is finding a ticket from EarthOnEmpty.com on their windshield.

I can’t imagine anybody would be too happy about getting one of these tickets — as that amounts to being condemned and ridiculed in a semi-public fashion. Actually I think it would tend to bring out the worst in most people, which is too bad, because the campaign itself is harmless. Check out the negative feedback the campaign has received from SUV owners — name-calling, stereotypes, threats of violence, the typical adolescent gamut. A few of the messages are reasonable, which I find refreshing — not only that EarthOnEmpty would print them, but that someone who’d received a ticket could respond civilly.

On the other hand, there’s this: “BTW, this is America, if I want to keep my color TV on for 20 years, I damn well will.” Oh, yeah, that’ll show ‘em.