Edwards takes: "Huge Political Gamble"?

The Age
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/edwards-big-call-on-big-cars/2007/08/31/1188067366025.html
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Edwards' big call on big cars
Anne Davies, Washington
September 1, 2007

THIS week the US Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards took a huge political gamble: he told an audience of unionists in Florida that they needed to give up their sports utility vehicles in the interests of combating greenhouse gas emissions.

"I think Americans are actually willing to sacrifice," Mr Edwards said during a forum held by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. "One of the things they should be asked to do is drive more fuel-efficient vehicles."

Asked specifically whether he meant Americans should give up their sports utility vehicles, or SUVs, the forthright North Carolina senator replied: "Yes."

Mr Edwards had better hope he has read the American psyche correctly. The statistics suggest he is dead wrong.

drivers, they do loves them some SUV's. But he's not wrong in saying it, it needs to be said over and over again by all of our Democratic candidates.

Peace!

I think he has a real shot in Michigan because of his ties to Bonior and Bonior's strength in Macomb County and with the unions, but I don't know how he is going to be able to sell that message in auto plants where workers who actually make these SUV's are already anxious about their future.

I'm not saying he is wrong on the merits, just that it was surprising coming from a guy who I think really needs to carry Michigan.

http://www.uaw.org/uawmade/cartruck2007.cfm

I don't know for how much longer they will or should make SUV's. But right now they do.

Why wouldn't that just tickle automakers pink?

I don't know why it doesn't.

Blood for oil is the sign of a corrupt, selfish, stupid population. Make them enlist, and those hybrids will look mighty nice to 'em!

In about 3 to 5 years, we will be looking at a new
set of options for powering vehicles, led by GMs
Chevy volt initiative.
Guilt has not historically worked well to get
Americans to change their lifestyles.
It didn't work for Jimmy Carter - even tho he was
right. The rise in energy prices in the late
70s is what actually pushed usage down, and in
our time, the continued rise in the price of gas is what
is driving the change in technology.


Worth asking whether we would have been able
to get rid of slavery if not for the cotton gin.

http://www.eliwhitney.org/cotton.htm
"However, like many inventors, Whitney (who died in 1825) could not have foreseen the ways in which his invention would change society for the worse. The most significant of these was the growth of slavery. While it was true that the cotton gin reduced the labor of removing seeds, it did not reduce the need for slaves to grow and pick the cotton. In fact, the opposite occurred. Cotton growing became so profitable for the planters that it greatly increased their demand for both land and slave labor. In 1790 there were six slave states; in 1860 there were 15. From 1790 until Congress banned the importation of slaves from Africa in 1808, Southerners imported 80,000 Africans. By 1860 approximately one in three Southerners was a slave.

Because of the cotton gin, slaves now labored on ever-larger plantations where work was more regimented and relentless. "

It would have been a big deal if he had been saying this same thing 8-10 years ago...when giving up SUV's would have seemed radical and would have done some good. Now, everybody already knows that SUV's are an endangered species. I live in SC and even here we see more and more Minis and VW's on the roads every day.

taking office

We don't need those big things, they are a danger to people driving smaller cars, we existed with out them for hundreds of years, we can do it now, if we don't have enough energy to suffice