Want to save the planet? Buy a used car

One of the most infuriating facets of this entire "carbon footprint" green environmentalist nonsense is when the guilty bourgeois - yuppie upper-middle class liberals with a guilty conscience and enviro-activist mindset attempting to offset years of vapid consumption - buy hybrid vehicles to "save the planet" from, essentially, themselves.

Members of this guilty bourgeois express incredulity at anyone who would be as brash and irresponsible as to drive an SUV, yet the hypocrisy of their positions is extremely hard to deny. Personal freedom be damned, the guilt-stricken believe that all carbon emissions(read: all economic activity) should be taxed heavily, and the government should become entrenched in the day-to-day lives of all Americans in the hopes of "saving the planet".

The global warming debate is still raging, despite what the IPCC and other groups would have us believe, but let us pretend for a moment that global warming is real, and it will spell doom for humanity within the next hundred years. Shouldn't the proponents of anthropogenic global warming be the ones most up to date with information on the methods in which humans can reduce their carbon footprint?

This would logically be the case, but these people are not known for their logic. These are the same people who would have had us believe in the 1970s that the world was about to reenter an ice age. These are the same people that buy hybrid vehicles in an effort to reduce their carbon footprints. These people are stupid.

The construction of the average car requires 27-54 barrels of oil (1,100-2,000 gallons). Hybrids, due to their numerous high-tech subsystems, require more. By today's oil prices of $144, at least $7,776 dollars of a new automobile's purchase price pays for the energy required to make said auto. This energy comes from, guess where, oil, coal and natural gas.

The carbon footprint created by the manufacture and transport of each and every hybrid vehicle on the road, should we be concerned with such things, is huge. Anyone who purchases one should not be able to call themselves an environmentalist with a straight face. Any true environmentalist who both cares about his or her carbon footprint but also recognizes the need for personal transport in daily life should without a doubt engage in the purchase of an automobile that has already set its carbon footprint - a used car.

Many used cars, especially ones released following the oil shocks of the 1970s, get extremely good gas mileage. Many newer model used cars do as well. Yet, regardless of whether or not a hybrid gets 45 mpg as opposed to a mid-80s sedan's 33, the sedan's carbon footprint was already set when it was manufactured. In 1988. This is a no brainer: hybrids, the same as all new cars, are terrible for the environment, and anyone who drives one to save the environment is a fool.