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......
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Approximate Pages: 2 (260 words per double-spaced page) |