Ever hear someone rationalize their purchase of a gas-guzzling SUV as something they did to protect the safety of their kids? I hear that all the time. It’s delusional, and here’s why…

Let’s just say — for the sake of getting to the real point — that the safety argument has merit (for the most part, it doesn’t).

These people are “protecting their children” because they “are the future”. Protecting them so that they can become productive members of society and help build a better world. But the greenhouse gases that we’re cranking out — with significant help from those very same SUV’s — are pretty much going to guarantee that the following generation will live a life of strife, dealing with minor issues such as significant loss of inhabitable land, food crop failures, mass migration of populations, huge costs for remediating polluted sites that will only be lost to rising seas… and so on. It’s a long, terrifying list.

In case the implications of that last paragraph weren’t entirely clear, let me spell it out in simple terms: poverty, disease, starvation, death.

So to you SUV owners out there I say this: protect those children, but don’t be too surprised when your grandchildren decide that it’s fair to sacrifice the generation that caused the problem as part of the solution. It’s not their fault, they truly won’t have much choice. The choice is yours. Be prepared for the consequences.

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