Suvs

Today, our cities and suburbs, our houses, and even our cars are a reflection of the American fascination with expansion and the frontier. Take the SUV, for example. The names of SUVs such as Ford Explorer, BMW X5, and Jeep Wrangler are all directly evocative of Wild West folklore. In the 1980 , when the SUV craze first began, the national productivity rate was shriveling while the national debt was mounting. People were finally beginning to realize the limits of the economic frontier. The SUV embodies the ideals of careless expansion; these gas guzzlers were carelessly designed without the environment in mind. Most of the SUVs on the market today can only drive for 12 miles per gallon in the city. Many SUVs like the enormous Ford Excursion are so large that they are not subject to any kind of fuel economy standards at all. The statistics show that global warming caused by car emissions is an ignored problem; one in every four cars bought today is an SUV. The SUV embodies an escapist fantasy, allowing us to overcome time and space in an encapsulated vehicle that shelters us from the natural world. America love affair with SUVs demonstrates the furthering gap between humans and the environment.

Our isolated homes, cars and cities contain us in a contrived world where we are disconnected from the source of all life, the natural world. As we e seen, the way that we construct and live in our spaces demonstrates this fact. We are deceived by the illusion that we are independent from the source. This disconnection from the environment is causing us to overestimate the earth ability to sustain our lifestyle of endless consumption. By learning about the sustainable ways of the Native Americans, we can develop a better understanding about the relationship between humans and the earth. I don claim to have an answer to the global eco-crisis, but we e got to start somewhere. However impossible the task of reducing our consumption may sound, minimizing our destruction of the environment will not require us to fully abandon the social constructs that we have so