Less than 1% of the world's oil has been extracted. Right now, oil is NOT a scarce resource, nor is it likely to be for some time.

This completely ignores the true cost of burning oil. I am not talking about the money it takes to get it out of the ground, refine it, transport it, and put it into your car.

The true costs are the irreversible damages done to the ecosystem by burning it. Particulate emissions; higher CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere; global warming; it's reassuring to know that 99% of the stuff is still there waiting to be burned. Probably by the time we get through 30% of it the planet will be unfit to support life as we know it.

Our great-grandchildren (or maybe sooner than that!) will look back upon our generation with astonishment, to think that we took this incredibly valuable chemical and of all the goddam things we could think of to do with it, we burned it to make our cars go and ruined the planet in the process.

tanstaafl.

That is kind of my point. The issue is not how much gas these vehicles burn but how much pollution they produce.

Why then are the discussions in miles per gallon and not CO2 emissions?

-Biscuits

Your reasons for owning an SUV:
>>1. Comfort

SUVs ride like a truck, I can see your problem with size though. Ford fought that problem by underinflating the tires below spec. Very clever. See note on rollovers below.

>>2. Interior Storage ability (about every 2 weeks)
>>3. Being up high above the crowd
>>4. Towing ability (about every 2 weeks)
>>5. Knowing that if I get in an accident, it is the other guy's car that gets >>crumpled.

Yep, your bumper may end up going right through the trunk of a smaller car and cause lots of damage since the bumpers dont come close to lining up. Keep in mind since you have a higher center of gravity, your vehicle is much more likely to roll over in the event of a accident or tire blowout.

In my research on this issue, I found that ford made a lot of poor stability related decisions on the Explorer, despite the advice of their very own engineers. The internal memo went something like this: we need to widen the vehicle and make stiffer some other chassis components to make it safe. Im sure other companies make decisions like this all the time (statistical analysis of death and lawsuits for not replacing $10 worth of parts to fix a safety problem, etc)

>>6. Offroading ability. I go totally off-roading about once a year, although it is nice >>to be able to jump curbs and other obstacles much more often.

Rent a hummer ;-)

Another problem which is somewhat unrelated is that I see people driving SUVs like cars. SUVs are trucks! SUVs don't stop as fast as cars, they shouldn't be changing lanes like they are in a NASCAR race either!

Interesting, since those stats are six years old now, I bet the percentages are much worse.

If you converted these statistics into "deaths caused by trucks per thousand/million/or whatever vehicle miles travelled", you would find that trucks cause far fewer deaths than other vehicles for the distance they travel.

But when these big trucks do hit something, whatever they hit is going to stay hit and the people in the whatever it hit will probably be dead.

And yes, maybe the truck driver 30% of the time in those fatalties was half-asleep at the wheel, but thank goodness there are only 7 million truck drivers on the road at any one time, when the number of half-awake SUV and car drivers on the roads at the same time is probably 10 times the half-asleep large truck driver numbers.

And by all accounts, many car and SUV drivers (especially it seems), are never actually fully awake any time they are behind the wheel of their vehicle.

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Any current argument about oil being a scarce resource is bunk.

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Why is it then that the US spends $50 billion a year keeping it military forces in the Middle East? - mostly to "protect its (oil) interests"?

If oil is so plentiful, why is the US etc doing this?

Also, do you really think that the "war on Iraq"/Regime change will be about anything other than getting long term control of Iraqs oil supplies?

This WMD palava is a side-show to keep the folks at home away from the true facts of the matter.


As far as 1% of the worlds oil reserves being tapped - that may be true, but that 1% is the "easy to get at" oil, and the other 99% is locked in hard to extract or get at places such as tens of kilometres under the seas etc, places where they have no idea even now how to drill down to locate the oil, let alone get the oil out.
In 10 years time, maybe they might be closer to gettng at this oil.

Also note - the North Sea oil fields are running out, and in some cases have already run out.

That won't affect the US, but will put begin to put even more demand on OPEC countries to supply Europe and the US with even more oil than they do now, making the Middle East a even more strategic place than it is now.

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The issue is not how much gas these vehicles burn but how much pollution they produce.

Why then are the discussions in miles per gallon and not CO2 emissions

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Because the 2 figures pretty much track one with the other and MPG is easier for people to understand and recite.

[And its interesting to note that MPG figures were only made a legal requirement of the Detroit car makers and published along with other information about the car, after the Oil Shocks of 1973 - Detroit resisted the MPG figures thing for as long as it could - but thats another thread].

In actual fact SUV's emit more pollution of all types, not just CO2 per "gallon" of fuel burned than just about any other car you care to name, this is mostly due in part to the engine designs being the engine equivalent of modern dinosaurs.

And of course, if your SUV gets lower MPG, you have to burn more fuel to cover the same distance as a more fuel efficient vehicle does, thus emitting even more pollutants to get the same distance covered.

The whole reason why SUVs get away with this poor situation is that the SUV's are classed as "light trucks" and therefore are able to side-step any controls on pollutants that "regular" (i.e. non-SUV) vehicles have to meet.

And Detroit lobbies Congress very hard to ensure that this lack of pollution controls rule stays that way.

Of course, at the same time, the United States are trying to make a deal with Russia to gain access to the vast oil reserves under Siberia.

In 5 or 10 years, I imagine that hybrid cars will start to become much more commonplace, if not by the Big 5 automakers, then by somebody else. They have made enormous strides in recent years and the technology seems to be there for the mass market. All that is needed now is for the right designs to surface and for people to be made aware of them.

I like my Ford Explorer, but not because it uses more gasoline than some other vehicles.

-Biscuits

In 5 or 10 years, you might *just* be seeing Hybrid SUV's coming out of Detroit, but I wouldn't hold your breath.
5 years is the minimum planning window that Detroit is using for Hybrids, so maybe the 2008 model will be a Hybrid.

Meanwhile we have 5 more years of poor performing SUVs to come...

Aren't the majority of CO2 emissions from heavy trucks. I seem to remember a statistic from about 1990 that 90% of the pollution was caused by 10% of the vehicles. At that time, the high-polluting vehicles (mostly trucks, but also old cars) caused 89 times the pollution of the other ones. Granted, this is an old statistic, but large trucks have very powerful backers and have been exempt from most pollution legislation since then.

I would be interested to know what the current statistics are. I imagine that SUVs are worse than small cars but still dwarfed by tractor-trailors in the amount of pollution produced.

-Biscuits

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Aren't the majority of CO2 emissions from heavy trucks. I seem to remember a statistic from about 1990 that 90% of the pollution was caused by 10% of the vehicles. At that time, the high-polluting vehicles (mostly trucks, but also old cars) caused 89 times the pollution of the other ones. Granted, this is an old statistic, but large trucks have very powerful backers and have been exempt from most pollution legislation since then.

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Most truck engines don't actually emit large amounts of CO2 as they run on Diesel, the engines typically have very high compression ratios, super/turbo chargers and all sorts of high-tech features that the average SUV engine has never heard of. This results in them emitting higher levels of pollutants like NOX (Nitrogen Oxides) - which are not greenhouse gases, merely responsible for the photochemical smogs and eventually acid rain.

Trucks do however emit lots more visible pollution than cars and lots of particulates (so called PM10s), which are proven to be very carcinogenic.

That figure you stated was for worst case situations in a study done in Calfornia from memory and these cases were a few old bangers of cars were found to be poking out 89 times the level of CO (Carbon Monoxide) - CO is a greenhouse gas too, but typically gets converted to CO2 eventually or chemically bound with other elements to form other compounds.

That study also showed that having a modern well tuned fleet of vehicles was as equally important as getting the old bangers off the roads.

This study was also conducted well before the SUV craze started in earnest.


Detroit wants the right to be able to captilise on this situation and allow the "trade in" the old bangers and get "carbon credits" for getting these old bangers off the road, so that they can then transfer the right to emit the pollution to new SUVs and cars - note this won't actually reduce the pollution, just spread it over more (and newer) vehicles.

A similar study conducted in LA found that burger bars and fast food joints were actually - to everyones surprise - major emitters of pollutants that cause photochemical smogs - this was becuase the "fat molecules" that go up the air circulation/venting systems is unfiltered and just the right size and make up to bind with other pollutants in the air and cause these smogs.

But thats a different story, and its not the same in all places in the US.

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I would be interested to know what the current statistics are. I imagine that SUVs are worse than small cars but still dwarfed by tractor-trailors in the amount of pollution produced

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Heres some figures* sourced from the DetroitProject website - take them at face value or not: The source is shown below. I snipped out the ones that are not relevant.

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7. Cars are responsible for 25 percent of the heat trapping (Global Warming) gases produced.

8. The U.S. consumes 8 billion barrels of oil a year, much of which goes to fueling our vehicles.

9. Average mileage of our new cars and trucks is at its lowest level in 20 years.

...

12. The life span of each new car is now over twenty years.

13. There are already over 20 MILLION suv’s on the nations roads.

14. Suv’s spew up to SIX TIMES as much smog - causing pollution per mile as cars.

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17. An automobile engine produces 20 pounds of carbon dioxide for every gallon of gas it burns, or about 1 pound per mile.

18. A hybrid car produces less than one half pound of CO2 per mile.

19. Suv’s have no fuel economy standards because they are considered trucks.

20. Fleet-wide fuel economy is decreasing because of the growing popularity of suv’s.


*Source: Natural Resources Defense Council
From the book, High and Mighty: SUVs: The World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and how They Got That Way, by Keith Bradsher. Copyright © 2002.

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Assuming these figures are somewhat accurate (or no less inaccurate than the fiugures Detroit would rebutt them with ;-) )

Each SUV pollutes to the same level as 6 cars, that means that the current SUV "pollution" factor is equivalent to 120 million cars if 20 million SUVS are on the road now, and with at least 12.5 million new SUVs sold each year (based on 25% minimum of new vehicles are SUVs, with 50 million "cars" -( including SUVs I guess) made each year), then the pollution footprint of *new* SUV alone is equivalent to a least the equivalent 75 million cars *Each Year* - and growing.

Or to put it another way - collectively, new SUVs have at least twice the pollution footprint of all the non-SUV cars made each year - and that footprint is growing.

And won't shrink for probably at least 5 years or until Hybrid SUVs start coming onstream..

Most truck engines don't actually emit large amounts of CO2 as they run on Diesel, the engines typically have very high compression ratios, super/turbo chargers and all sorts of high-tech features that the average SUV engine has never heard of. This results in them emitting higher levels of pollutants like NOX (Nitrogen Oxides) - which are not greenhouse gases, merely responsible for the photochemical smogs and eventually acid rain.

Trucks do however emit lots more visible pollution than cars and lots of particulates (so called PM10s), which are proven to be very carcinogenic.


You can thank all the trucking companies/assosciations/lobbyists for that one...Europe has had clean diesel laws in effect for a few years now, and this in turn has led to clean and powerful diesel engines for cars. (eg VW's 1.9TDi, 130BHP & 50mpg)
In the meanwhile, US is lagging (again), so the US equivalent of that same engine only outputs 90BHP.... so few people actually buy diesel cars.

Fortunately, that will change in the near future. I can't remember exactly when, but IIRC, the clean diesel laws will come into effect in 2004.

Thank you number6, that is the kind of information I was looking for. I think that gas mileage is unlikely to sway many people, but pollution arguments are much more effective.

I wonder how accurate those statistics are, seeing as how they are from this particular group....

In actual fact SUV's emit more pollution of all types, not just CO2 per "gallon" of fuel burned than just about any other car you care to name, this is mostly due in part to the engine designs being the engine equivalent of modern dinosaurs.

I think CO2 is a bit of a red herring here. Any two engines will produce (essentially) the same amount of CO2 from one gallon of the same fuel. CO2 is a product of clean burning of hydrocarbons, along with water vapour, and despite being a greenhouse gas it is naturally present in the atmosphere and so probably isn't a "pollutant" in the sense meant by the study quoted in number6's post. At least in this country, when people talk about pollutants from vehicle emissions, they mean CO, nitrous oxides, and all the stuff (e.g. from fuel additives) that isn't CO2 or water vapour.

Peter

Probably by the time we get through 30% of it the planet will be unfit to support life as we know it.

Yeah, but by that time there'll be so much carbon in the atmosphere that the pyre of our own civilisation will turn into an oil seam over geological time. The Second Carboniferous Era, they'll call us.

Our great-grandchildren (or maybe sooner than that!) will look back upon our generation with astonishment, to think that we took this incredibly valuable chemical and of all the goddam things we could think of to do with it, we burned it to make our cars go and ruined the planet in the process.

This is good point we hadn't had. However damaging a gasoline drought would be to the world's standard of living, it wouldn't be half as damaging as a petrochemical drought.

Peter

Or to put it another way - collectively, new SUVs have at least twice the pollution footprint of all the non-SUV cars made each year - and that footprint is growing.

Assume for a minute we get rid of all SUVs: Then we would still have a dilema because some groups of cars produce significantly more pollution the other groups of cars. We are not suddenly in the clear because SUVs are gone. Pollution is a growing and chronic problem in which all vehicles share blame. A solution would then be for EVERYONE to drive ONLY supersubcompacts which get 40+ mpg and have extremely efficient (clean) gas utilizing engines. Not great performers but then at least we will ALL be doing our part to protect our environment. Focusing solely on SUVs is not the solution. The fact remains that in addition to SUVs, many (I would hazard to guess most) people are driving cars that are not considered to be the most efficient available. The desire for design, comfort, performance make this unlikely. Until the auto manufacturers offer alternatives, a significant reduction in pollution emmisions will not occur. They must lead the charge and offer choices people will gravitate towards.

How can anyone justify the fact that a SUV or any *passenger* vehicle puts out 6 times the pollutants that a normal non-SUV car does?

I think thats about the level that the average 40 seater diesel powered bus emits - and a SUV only holds 7 or so people maximum.

This means that each mile driven in a SUV is the same as six cars driving the same distance or 1 car driving 6 times further.

Also, the oft quoted justification of "I can fit 7 people in my SUV so thats gotta save gas/be more efficient" doesn't really stack up when those same 7 people could each drive their own cars seperately and emit only slightly more pollution than the SUV would if it had 7 people in it".

And as many people have pointed out, most SUVs are not full with people or cargo - they are empty most of the time, or with a few kids in them maybe and the gas and pollution emitted is not a lot different I'd bet in either case whether its full of people or not.

Nobody is saying don't ever drive/buy SUVs - what people are saying is use them appropriately - and given that 1 in 4 sales of new cars are now SUVs there are a lot of inappropriate users/uses that those SUVs which make up 25% of the vehicle sales each year are being used for.

Each SUV will last probably up to 20 years, so once you sell it, it will still be giuzzling gas and emitting lots of pollution for a lot longer than your ownership.
So, 3 years of driving a SUV will emit the same pollution as driving the same car for 18 years.

And these figures only occur if the SUV is well maintained and kept properly tuned - as the SUVs age their pollution emission will sky rocket - thats how come old bangers produce the worst pollution of the lot as they are rarely properly maintained, with (new) SUVs not that far behind in the pollution stakes, and they (new SUVs) have 120 "car" equivalent years of polluting ahead of them if they last 20 years.

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A solution would then be for EVERYONE to drive ONLY supersubcompacts which get 40+ mpg and have extremely efficient (clean) gas utilizing engines. Not great performers but then at least we will ALL be doing our part to protect our environment. Focusing solely on SUVs is not the solution. The fact remains that in addition to SUVs, many (I would hazard to guess most) people are driving cars that are not considered to be the most efficient available. The desire for design, comfort, performance make this unlikely. Until the auto manufacturers offer alternatives, a significant reduction in pollution emmisions will not occur. They must lead the charge and offer choices people will gravitate towards.

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A large part of the problem with American cars lies in the lack of proper pollution and fuel efficiency laws - and those laws that do exist are watered down due to Detroits friends in Congress. [laws like SUVs being exempt from the laws that govern cars efficiency as they are classified as light trucks].

Focussing soley on SUVs is not, as you said, all the solution, but its a very good start - for every SUV you get off the road permanently you save a awful lot lot of pollution.

Most European [and Japanese] car makers routinely make and have made for years, non-Hybrid engined cars which get 40+MPG right now, using the same petrol and Diesel that you put in your tank now, and these are not poorly performing engines in super cramped cars (supersubcompacts in your parlance) that can't even do the same basic job that most SUVs are calledon to do now.

Read the post from some BBS members here, they have cars which have the same or more room and cargo carrying capacity inside than the average SUV, drive better, handle better, get much better mileage and cost a lot less than the average SUV and have modern safety features for Africa so that in a crash they don't roll over and they are designed so that when they crash, they deform the chassis, not the people inside.

We are talking about highly efficient engines which have 25%+ more power than the same model of car sold in the US - Due to the lack of proper laws the European models with all their efficiency can't be sold in the US "as is" and have to be detuned for the US market.

When the Hybrids come onstream, you will see a big improvement in MPG figures, for the same or better performance (most Hybrids have powerful electric drives which offer much better torque and acceleration than most petrol cars have) and as all the weight is generally lower down they rollover a lot less than the average SUV.

Detroit won't offer better models of vehicles than the SUVs they offer now unless they are compelled to by law - they make far too much money on SUVs to give them up and offer better models which cost them more to make, or you to buy.
[50% of Detroits profits come from SUVs and they only make up 25% of their sales currently].

If you think that Detroit will offer meaningful alternatives to SUVs that you can buy, think again - but then you could if you wanted buy a European or Japanese car and do yourself, and in the long term your country, a big favour - and thats probably the best and easiest way to send a message to Detroit - don't buy an American SUV, buy a European or Japanese one - and these SUVs are more like SUVs should be.

To me the whole SUV thing has gone full circle back to the days when Nader was taking on the car makers in Detroit and winning - a lot of those hard won victories and lessons learned have been forgotten and buried over time, and the catch cry of "Unsafe at any speed" is probably as true today about SUVs as it ever was about the cars around in Naders day.

My wife loves her Escape, and I have no problems with it. It seems to run well and we've already put 26,000 miles on it in only a year. As I mentioned before, I drive a Mustang so I miss the tight steering and being low to the ground when I'm in her car, but she thinks it's absolutly wonderful.

That is an interesting look at the data ... Isn't it always fun how depending on how you look at the numbers, they can say very different things?

I suppose this argument reduces down to the exact same argument as oil consumption -- i.e. do you care more about the relative deadliness of the trucks or the absolute deadliness of the trucks.

"I hope it's not the image factor, because you'll be paying about $8K plus gas money for an image."

I wouldn't be the first would I?

I can say abolutly without question that the minivan thing is a "coolness" factor for my wife, and being as its her car I'd have to have a pretty good reason to tell her "No." I'm sure my next car will have at least 8K poured into "coolness" (because I could buy a nice little Saturn that gets me to work for around 15K) so I don't need to tell her she can't do the same. Face it, the reason we buy the cars we do is mostly for the "coolness", otherwise there would be about five different kinds of vehicle on the road and we'd all drive the same thing (empeg's firmly intact).

Read the post from some BBS members here, they have cars which have the same or more room and cargo carrying capacity inside than the average SUV, drive better, handle better, get much better mileage and cost a lot less than the average SUV and have modern safety features for Africa so that in a crash they don't roll over and they are designed so that when they crash, they deform the chassis, not the people inside.

It's great that these people are happy with these vehicles, however; it's also obvious from the rising popularity of SUVs that there is also a large group of people who do not want to drive these vehicles for whatever reason. If these cars were indeed suitable replacements(not that these are great cars) then I don't think we would be having this discussion because everyone would own them. The fact that SUVs are popular says a lot about what a certain segment of the population chooses to drive. I would love to see increased regulations and voluntary changes to reduce emissions of SUVs and all vehicles for that matter the same way I would like to see tougher requirements in other areas dealing with pollution control as well. I agree with you on many of your points but still believe that SUVs have been unfairly targeted for problems that have been with us well before the onset of the SUV. Due to their popularity I cannot see them fading away soon so I believe the realistic answer is to push the manufacturers to continually make them safer and more efficient.

We are talking about highly efficient engines which have 25%+ more power than the same model of car sold in the US - Due to the lack of proper laws the European models with all their efficiency can't be sold in the US "as is" and have to be detuned for the US market.

Genixia mentioned this as well:

Europe has had clean diesel laws in effect for a few years now, and this in turn has led to clean and powerful diesel engines for cars. (eg VW's 1.9TDi, 130BHP & 50mpg) In the meanwhile, US is lagging (again), so the US equivalent of that same engine only outputs 90BHP

How come a lack of laws in the US, as compared to Europe, means the 130BHP version can't be sold there? Surely "Dude, I just got 40 more horsepower" is about as American a car-buying sentiment as one could wish for? Is the grade of diesel different or something?

Peter

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to stay in the right-hand lanes unless passing

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AMEN!!! This is my biggest rant and I believe one of the largest causes of road rage... If your not passing please clear the way. Stop talking on the phone and just get over....

Face it, the reason we buy the cars we do is mostly for the "coolness"

Some of us don't.

The first car I ever drove was about a '92 Oldsmobile Silhouette, or whatever was the first year they made them. It was the least cool thing a 16 year old high school student could drive. I loved it. It had nothing flashy about it. Bad stereo, seats were difficult to remove, and the sliding doors were a puzzle to anyone new to the car. It was my favorite car (keep in mind that after that I've driven an Eclipse, LR Discovery, and - on occasion - my dad's company Lexus ).

So if everyone buys their cars for the "coolness", I'd be suprised by what the other college kids thought about my current minivan.

Face it, not everyone does buy for coolness. Once and a while, people buy things for practicality. I've hauled countless band instruments, pa systems, drum kits, etc. in my van, and have frequently had 7 people riding inside (fraternity, any of 3 school bands I'm in), and I'm always giving about 4 other people rides home on break, earning me a little extra cash. I went for practical.

Please allow me to rephrase my point: I think "coolness" is a large factor when most people buy cars. The reason I drive a Mustang isn't because it's just another car. It's fun and I think it looks nice. There are more effecient cars that do exactly what mine does: get me from point "A" to point "B". Still, I enjoy driving it so that's why I was willing to spend the extra cash.

Certainly when there are financial considerations, such as being in college, of course you get what you can afford. Right now, however I'm out of college and making enough money to spend a little on stuff I like. And what I like isn't always necessarily simply the utility of a vehicle. So if my wife wants an SUV I'v got no problem with that, even if its for the "coolness" factor. The fact we'll need more room eventually means her next vehicle probably won't be a Ford Escape but something a little bigger.

So how much pollution are SUVs really pumping out? Is it the 6x figure which seems absolutely incredible? Which kinds of pollution are most important and how do SUVs stack up with those?

One thing I read a while back that I thought was interesting. California has been adding "clean fuel" additives for years now. MTBE reduces the air pollution, at the expense of poisoning the ground water. The other additive, ethanol, increases the evaporation rate of gasoline, thus adding to the number of pollutants in the air.

-Biscuits

I understand what you're saying. It's just when you say "Face it, the reason we buy the cars we do is mostly for the "coolness"", that's a blanket statement that would include me, which it doesn't apply to.

I do think that coolness factor is a reason why many people buy cars, I just don't think it's a good one. Finances weren't the reason I got a minivan. My family isn't all that bad off, and we probably could have gotten an SUV (that's why my father and I were test driving them). I was maintaining that the single reason I got a minivan over an SUV is that it was of more use to me. I weighed every option, and to me, the image I portrayed to a bunch of people who didn't know me did not justify the obscene amount of money that allowed me the privilege.

How come a lack of laws in the US, as compared to Europe, means the 130BHP version can't be sold there? Surely "Dude, I just got 40 more horsepower" is about as American a car-buying sentiment as one could wish for? Is the grade of diesel different or something?


I'm not sure about the technical details, but my memory wants to say that it's something to do with the sulphur content being lower in the clean diesels. Maybe it clogs the injectors, or exhaust ports or something.
Ironically, a lot of the more populous and emissions-friendly states *do* have the clean diesel, since they have enacted state laws. (eg California, Massachussets). The problem is that VW can't sell a car that'll break down as soon as it gets to a rural state. The rural states won't enact such laws themselves, since most of their constituents rely on diesel for agricultural purposes and don't want to bear any additional costs.

OK, point taken. That was a pretty broad statement and I really didn't mean to include everyone. Being a musician I've certainly dealt with more than a few people who drive vans for the utility. Also there are some (possibly like yourself) who simply don't care about how "cool" a vehicle is.

You should note, however, that don't drive the car I do to project an image to anyone. I really don't care what other people think of my car; I think it's cool and that's why I bought it. I seriously doubt as I drive down the road people say: "Wow, a green Mustang, I've never seen one of those before. He must be really cool!"

I suppose I get the sense (perhaps wrongly) that you think only utilitarian criteria should be used in assessing a purchase. THIS is what I disagree with. Certainly if you only care about utility then go right ahead and ignore aesthetics, but for others there is nothing wrong with choosing something because it's “cooler” (if they can afford it) even if it costs more. We (or most of us) make decisions on non-utilitarian criteria all the time, from clothes to houses. I am very fortunate to live in a place where I have the freedom to spend my money this way. What we each favor is what makes us different and unique, it shouldn't be looked down upon.