I dont think its stupid. Some of us need them. I have a 1993 Suburban. We get 80 to 100+ inches of snow here in my part of Michigan and when I bought it we drove 15 miles of mostly unplowed road. We also have 4 kids, 2 dogs and a mother-in-law we cart around along with a 25 foot pontoon boat in the summer. We actually use it for what it was designed for, large towing capacity and large crowd to carry around. Now the suburban is dead and is going to cost me about $1000 bucks to repair, I decided to go ahead and get a smaller car for my 100+ mile daily commute instead of repairing it at this time to save gas, but we are now back to driving 2 cars when everyone wants to go out. Sure I miss the suburban and it is sitting in the garage waiting for repairs and I will get it back on the road at the begining of next year. Will I drive it
daily again? no. Cost of gas was roughly 120-150 a week. Will I drive it once a week and on long trips hauling the boat, people and gear? Sure will. As for safe, yeah it is a safer vehicle. Don't believe me? Ask my insurance company. They raised my premium because the 96 contour was in their words "Less safe, because the suburban has more iron around it" even though the suburban had no air bags, 2 years older and was a "roll over" risk...so thats where I get the safer argument from, the insurance agency.
As for peak oil, I doubt we are there, if we ever get there. Yeah I said that. My sister works for a drilling company and she said ANWAR has more oil there then Saudi and they are finding new sources every year. Are these sources easy to get to? No, which makes them more expensive to extract. That's where the expense is coming from, the extraction, not so much "Peak oil". Peak oil has been predicted a lot of times since oil was discovered. Sort of like the end of the world argument. We have only explored
less then 5% of the ocean floor, how can anyone predict peak oil if more then 95% of the ocean is still yet unexplored? Sure a majority of it is at huge depths but who would have predicted that we could have ever reached the oil reserves under the ocean we are using now back in the 30's or 40's?
Anyone ever heard about Abiotic oil?
Abiogenic petroleum origin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Who knows, it could be true I suppose. The part about finding hydrocarbons on other planets and moons is intriguing to me if hydrocarbons only come from plant/dino material.
Now don't get me wrong, I am all for getting off foreign oil and finding alternative cleaner, cheaper and more efficent sources of energy, not because of the abundance (or lack of) hydrocarbons, but its just the right thing to do.