My bicycle is a sport utility vehicle.

What is the point of this question? I assume it's a MPG issue? If so, there are small SUVs that get better gas mileage than large cars. I own a large sedan that gets about 17mpg. Ah, am I the devil?

Well, let's ask another question. How many miles do I drive? Not many! Before I retired I drove my car or rode my electric bicycle to work 4 miles away, and I walk to the grocery store, library, etc because I'm centrally located. Is the person driving an fuel efficient car 16 miles to work getting 4 times the gas mileage of my car? No, and there were many people at my work driving over 40 miles each day each way!

Do I blame those that live further away and have to drive to the grocery store, etc? No. I feel the government should be pushing the average mpg standard slightly higher each year.

But don't worry, I plan on buying an electric car next year and it'll be recharged with green energy which my home currently uses.

A better poll would be how many gallons of gas do you use each year for personal transportation?

does a pickup truck count?

That would be cute on a t-shirt!

it's not just gas consumption and polution. SUVs are responsible for 3000 deaths a year more than if hey were just cars. SUVs are unsafe for the environment, unsafe for the people they hit, and un safe for their own ocupants.

When I lived in downtown DC, I would frequently get an earful from friends about my hand-me-down (free from a relative) SUV that my wife and I drove on weekends. Meanwhile these friends lived in the suburbs and drove their Hondas in and out of the city to work every day.

Yes, I drive an SUV - with a "W" sticker on it!

The ire SUVs inspire is beyond me. It's seems like such displaced agression and wasted energy (there's an ironic thought!). making such a trivial icon the symbol of the green movement really detracts from our ability to get common-sense changes made to the way we, as a population, use resources.

The reality is SUVs are a product of market demand, nothing more, nothing less. As hard as it may be for some militants to believe: people don't buy SUVs because they burn more fuel! They purchase them for other reasons, many of which are legitimate. (Anyone here ever tried pulling a horse trailer with a Honda Civic hybrid?)

Prius' just can't cut it for everyone that needs to drive -- like my neighbor with five kids and a dog. On the other hand, SUVs are a clear luxury (to put it mildly) for some of their owners.

Regardless, the real issue in the near term is improved fuel economy for all modes of transportation, and in the long run alternative energy in general. American SUV ownership's impact on the environment pales in comparison, for example, to the flights that carry people from New York to LA, the capitals of hybird ownership. Burning Jet fuel pales in comparison, for example, to China's combustion of coal to fuel its economic growth. (China's coal consumption accounts for a good fraction of air and water quality degradation in the US as far into the US as the Great Lakes! The Wall Street Journal, 20 December 2004)

The safety issues are also subject to debate, which we've done before and are not worth rehashing here.

As a body interested in "being green", we should focus our energy on the things that can make a real long term impact on society and it's efficiency. Making our neighbors uncomfortable because of what they drive just shouldn't be part of the movement.

Yet another poorly written survey question, which will produce useless data, and needlessly peeve off many readers....

I agree, don't post surveys that have no bearing or responsibility. They have no legitimacy unless they are conducted properly, and will only create false sense of reality. It is only fodder for unmerited propaganda.

Furthermore, I have always admired this site as a progressive and optimistic site, not a place of smug righteousness or harsh vilification.

J L,

I think you may be taking this little online poll a bit too seriously. The part between parenthesis should have given away that it was light hearted, and the absence of details is a dead giveaway that is has no scientific pretensions.

I think a more general transportation survey would be interesting. To get a rough idea of what treehuggers are doing of course, not the nation as a whole. Like this:

How do you get around:
a)Walk
b)Bike
c)public transit
d)hybrid car\suv
e)diesel
f)gasoline

or something simpler, but that would be the idea. With a cookie to make double answering(slightly) more difficult.

YAY!!

Oh I think it is a shot well taken. I drive an SUV and feel guilty about it. Unfortunately, it is needed to accommodate what I need to transport. Would love to convert it someday to a hybrid or flex fuel engine but realize that is an unlikely possibility or be able to afford to buy a hybrid SUV.

I do, however, appreciate this site's postings on carbon pay back organizations which I have donated to in order to compensate for this habit. A small way to feel less guilty about owning a gas-guzzler.

Yeah, MGR, I tend to think that people who get easily offended by talk of SUVs mayhaps be feeling a little guilty about their own transportation choices.

It's a lot like the responses I get when I say I'm a vegetarian. My plant-based diet is not at all a reflection on them, but they tend to take it as such, since they have a niggling feeling deep down inside that eating animal products may in some way be not so great for the other animals, the environment, or even themsleves. But they like eating animal products, and so they have that annoying duel of thoughts inside their brains that makes them unhappy and frustrated. And so they get all agitated and defensive with me. And all I've done was to tell them what kinds of foods I prefer to eat. (Fortunately, I understand all this, so I can do my best to not take the aggression personally, and just let it go.)

Who knows, maybe the Treehugger editors just wanted to see how popular SUVs are with their readers, and nothing more...

As a sociologist I feel I must first point out that no matter how well worded a survey on a blog is (or any website for that matter), which is simply open to any user passing by to answer can have no pretentions toward legitimacy, science, validity or in anyway producing useful data.

All it can hope to do, is inform us about those who

i) Are internet users

ii) Happened upon the site on the day in question and noticed the survey

iii) Then felt an urge to complete the survey

As such the data is exceedingly biased, without even taking the wording of the questions into account. As such, there is little point in getting excercised over how this, or any other survey, is presented, worded etc., as the results are meaningless all the same.

In the case of this survey, the results can only hope to highlight the level of SUV ownership among those who frequent Treehugger on a daily basis. A group, which it is fair to assume are probably decidedly less likely than the "average joe" to be SUV owners. Moreover, knowing the readership of Treehugger, any SUV owning/driving viewer will probably be reticent to come foward, thus skewing the results. So again, just on the basis of a quick look we can see why wording is not the primary concern here.

What would seem to be more pertinent is why does Treehugger sully itself with these surveys at all. On what is otherwise a usually well written, thoughtful, insightful source, these do definitely lower the tone and credibility. Even if they are published in a lighthearted spirit.

As an aside, for those who queried the bias of the question against SUVs, as opposed to a question based on fuel efficency or amount of fuel consumed per day/week/month, it is worth baring in mind one point. The SUV is an exceedingly artifically constructed classification of vehicle which cannot be compared with minivans/spacewagons estates etc., the SUV is classified as a truck and as such is subject to less stringent emissions standards. Hence it pollutes more for every gallon it inefficently consumes, that is, it pollutes more than a large CAR which may have a lower MPG but also must have lower emmisions, by virtue of being a CAR.

Uh, i drive a Hummer H2, with a W sticker on it, as well as a support the troops magnet, because Iraq is about cheaper oil!

doesnt suvs bring more polluting to the world wich causes global warming .Shame

I drive a Sequoia with a nice little sticker on the back.

"Anybody but Hillary"

I used to drive an old Postal Jeep which was lucky to get 11 MPG. How I drive an SUV which gets ~20 MPG. With each vehicle I do better!
If someone will give me the money to buy a hybrid with the space I need, I will gladly do so. Otherwise I buy what I can afford and that which fits my life.