Are overweight and overpowered motor cars the most profligate source of unnecessary CO2 emissions?
Tough question because what you consider ‘extravagant’ or ‘unnecessary’ is rather subjective. Let’s look at some numbers though. A large SUV has ~3 times the CO2 emissions as a Prius. I think if everyone in the US bought the most fuel efficient car that met their needs with the current technology, we could cut our emissions in half. However, this is a problem mostly limited to the US, and cars are only responsible for 9% of GHG emissions worldwide, so using smaller cars wouldn’t result in a huge overall GHG reduction. I think the 2 biggest sources which could be reduced relatively easily are from coal fired power plants and deforestation due to land use change for livestock. With renewable energy technologies like solar advancing rapidly, coal burning power plants are a completely unnecessary source of CO2 emissions, if we only had the funds to replace them. Livestock account for 18% of anthropogenic GHG emissions, and only 5% are due to their methane releases.
