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City-bound sport-utility vehicles are easy targets.
Few consumer items symbolize so much of what's wrong with society these days as a gas-guzzling, road-hogging, Honda Civic-munching SUVs whose primary function is ferrying overpaid lawyers from the suburbs to the office tower, not a square millimetres of its paint job obscured my mud, it's tires unfamiliar with any surface but asphalt and concrete.
But we shouldn't be too hard on the Yuppies who have been conned into spending twice as much as necessary simply to avoid having to sit next to some suspicious character on the bus.
In fact, I say we should be kind to them, and not just because they're hobbled by an inability to appreciate what's really important in life. For in just a few years, they won't be unable to unload the damn things for more than the cost of a transit pass.
Why, you ask? Some of the more optimistic eco-types would have you believe that government will finally see the light and legislate them off the road.
But other than Ottawa's half-hearted promise to subject SUVs to fuel-efficiency standards appropriate for cars, there's little sign of that happening. Not with the auto-industry cranking them out as fast as they can find the steel and rubber.
Could this month's international conference to nail down the details of the Kyoto deal on greenhouse-gas emissions lead to a new regulatory regime?
Considering no industrialized country has ratifief the deal, that seems doubtful.
How about growing public awareness of the climate-changing consequences of wasteful modes of transport? Could that bring about a change in consumer consciousness?
Hardly. Skyrocketing SUV sales pretty well parallel growing public awareness of climate change. And being aware doesn't mean caring.
Just last week, word leaked out that the third major report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, due out next year, will include predictions three times as worse as previously thought.
One of the report's Canadian authors, Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria, says we can expect the report to state something like "from the body of evidence since 1996 we conclude that there has been a discernible human influence on global climate."
To anyone who understands how conservative and cautious the consensus of 2000-odd scientists on the IPCC is, this is big news. Instead "suggests," as the panel did in 1995, this time they're going to say "conclude."
I can't emphasize how significant this is. But how many of you even heard the news when it was leaked last week? The New York Times managed a story, and it survived a couple CBC Radio news cycles, but that was it.
Not that I'm surprised media empires supported by SUV ads wouldn't bother to give such a story the play it deserves. But I digress.
No, the real reason why today's SUV owner will be tomorrow's laughing stock is a simple matter of supply and demand. We're running out of gas.
Don't believe me? Heard it all before? Well, I'll concede that previous predictions of gasoline shortages have been somewhat inaccurate.
All the way back to the early 1970s, apocalyptic scenarios have been bandied about, only to be withdrawn in the face of new technologies and industrial strategies.
But consider these unassailable facts: discoveries of new supplies of petroleum peaked in 1962. Since then, global consumption has outpaced discovery to the point where new reserves amount to only 25 per cent of consumption growth each year.
This can't continue. Craig Hadfield, a retired University of Toledo geologist and world authority on oil supplies, told me the other day that he expects world oil production to begin falling in 2010.
The rather more establishment-minded International Energy Agency has similar fears, putting that same peak between 2009 and 2012.
Even if the explorating drillers were to exceed their wildest dreams by finding another Prudhoe Bay -- the largest oil field in North America -- that would only buy the planet an extra six month's breathing room, according to Weaver.
And when demand outstrips supply, I think it safe to assume the resulting price hikes will make this year's look like so many bumps on the proverbial road -- the one that was chewed up by all those SUV tires.
Still think 75 cents a litre is a expensive? Here's my prediction: by 2010, gas will cost at least $4 a litre.
I can already here the SUV crowd crying. Imagine spending $200 to fill up a tank. Do I hear any sympathy? Related sites: