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this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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My wife drives a 12 year old SUV. She cleans homes and commercial properties for a living so she needs to carry around a bunch of cleaning supplies, vacuums, etc. Stuff not easily fit into a smaller car. If someone were to flatten her tires she would probably just be late to her client’s place.
If you want to say there are too many SUVs on the road then I agree with you. However right now, in this society, they can have a purpose. If we want to fight the real enemy and make some real changes to society then I’m all for it. However, by attacking the working class we are attacking ourselves.
If it's a car that is used for it's not supposed to be targeted, according to this website. Avoid: Cars clearly used for people with disabilities, traders’ cars (even if they’re large), minibuses and normal-sized cars. https://www.tyreextinguishers.com/how-to-deflate-an-suv-tyre
Got it, so if she happens to be using that vehicle for getting groceries and not happen to have her equipment loaded then it’s game on. Cool cool cool.
There will always be cases of collateral damage. You won’t be able to safe the climate in such a big and complex society without disadvantaging some people.
Maybe one possibility for your wife could be to measure the cleaning equipment and see if it might fit into a smaller car and potentially buy cleaning equipment that is more foldable that might fit. Usually even these small cars have a lot of space when using the back seat row. A big vacuum and mops should easily fit. If this is not possible then I completely understand your problem.
The bigger issue I see with this is that, when your wife would do everything to save gas, she would need to take some disadvantages, e.g., more uncomfortable to load the small vehicle. If there is no pressure for other people, she would be the only one doing it, making it unfair. That’s why it is so important to generate pressure on climate damaging behaviour on all fronts. And this action is one efficient and realistic way to achieve that. But of course you can make the movement more unpopular in the general population… It is really difficult to find and decide for a solution here…
I agree that there may potentially be some sort of solution to our situation. Believe me, we do talk about this sort of thing. However it also involves money we may or may not have. The best solution for her is probably to change careers (it’s very hard work and doesn’t want to do it forever anyway) but it’s going to take some time. In the meantime we are working with what we have.
None of this changes the fact that we are not the enemy. We can talk about collateral damage but this is just our situation. Many people are hurting right now, even if they drive a SUV or truck. And I do realize it is a double edged sword because we do need to move away from fossil fuels. The focus should be on those in power though. The systems involved with extraction of natural resources are more vulnerable than we think. Life for those in power can be made more difficult.
Practically noone in Germany uses an SUV as a commercial vehicle. That's because they suck at being commercial vehicles, you want something like a VW Transporter, either as minivan or flatbed. If you need 4WD (which you generally don't) may I interest you in an Unimog.
They'll also have commercial markings on the side, in the sense of "Wifey's cleaning service ". Easy to distinguish.
Now, I have to be honest, my sister drives a SUV, and even a 4WD one... though it's small, definitely by American standards. That's because she's hauling horses around and doesn't want to drive a Unimog when grocery shopping. It's like the one instance where having a sports utility vehicle actually makes sense, most people driving them neither use them for sport or utility, only as a vehicle. And noone's going to flatten her tires as she's living in a village, not some posh neigbourhood where the other kind of cars are Porsches and S-Classes. If you see a Lamborghini there it's a Tractor.