Kim C

As I said higher up the thread: "All kinds of geographical features, notably glaciers, carry evidence that has helped plot climate change backwards over many thousands, even millions of years" - ie knowledge of the trends is not limited to when we started measuring! And as for not having enough information.... for a start there is lots in this thread, with references to lots more. If you think this gives an unbalanced picture, do some internet searches. Whether you like it or not, you are going to find that the governmental, academic and scientific communities all lean strongly towards a link betwen human behavious and global warming.

The reason cars like your mom's don't draw so much flak these days could be that they became a lesser collective problem as America moved towards European and Japanese auto-design values in the seventies and eighties. SUVs have become a target because they are a major trend back towards excessive energy consumption right when everyone knows the world needs to be going the other way. As long as Americans think it's OK to go ten miles to work and back in SUVs, kids in Africa who at present run that far to school, will want that lifestyle too. So will hundreds of millions of people in India, and China, etc. That's what they're working towards - and in some small degree they are beginning to get. But if they all attain your lifestyle, Kim, we're all down the tubes. Yet who's to say you deserve that lifestyle more than the kid who runs 10 miles to school, or the seven-year-old who works 15-hour shifts in a carpet factory?

The point is, we all need to think new ways. For instance, do you have to be ten miles from work? Is it absolutely necessary that you "go to work" at all? Advancing technology means more of us could be staying at home to work, it's just that most of us, and most employers, are slow to latch on to that potential. Similarly aero-engineers have never really needed to make fuel efficiency a high priority, because aviation fuel is cheap (no tax). But aircraft emissions are a massive factor in global warming.

From what you say about bikes, I guess you've not ridden one much. Having pedalled around various cities - London, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, etc - and many open roads, including end to end of Britain, and pedalled up 36 miles a day going to work and back, I can tell you that when you've had an hour or two of trucks hurtling past with inches to spare on open roads, you come to see the congested traffic of suburbia as salvation. The most dangerous ride I ever did was the Dalton highway, north of Fairbanks, Alaska, which is a long way from Suburbia.

OK, you're not going to go to that extreme. But it's time for everyone to look to moderate lifestyles just a little bit. The US Government is expecting people in other countries to change their trends, so what's wrong with Americans making a contribution? Whatever you do, Kim, I don't think you can justify doing nothing on the basis that mom is fouling up the planet worse than you.