"Advice for Greenies in a Complicated World"

Dear JJ:

My wife and I are buying a car for our youngest son, who turns 17 next month. We're committed as a family to a low carbon footprint, so my wife drives the Lexus SUV hybrid, I drive a Tesla Roadster, and our twin 18-year-old sons each drive a Toyota Prius. We're hanging on to our 2002 Range Rover (I confess), but only for emergencies! Which 2010 eco-car do you recommend?

John Jr.'s Dad
Brentwood, CA

Dear John Jr.'s Dad:

While I admire your devotion to your kids, it's always good to recall--especially in the Los Angeles region--that a hybrid car is a car. So is a Tesla. It is not a magical environment-cleaning machine that sails into the sky under cover of darkness to gobble up carbon whenever President Obama--or even Al Gore--flashes the green bat signal. Legend to the contrary.

A Prius emits 4 tons/yr of CO2 if your teenager drives an annual average of 15,000 miles. That figure accounts for the vehicle's entire life cycle, from the ore mining and steel manufacture stages to freeway commuting and recycling. While he'll burn 320 gallons of gas each year to drive it, the manufacturing process itself has already burned up 113 million BTUs (equivalent to 905 gallons of gas)--a carbon debt equivalent to 41,630 miles, or three solid years, of driving.

I realize that using as many resources as possible as efficiently as possible is becoming a popular league sport in many communities. I also sympathize that buses arrive in some parts of Brentwood about as often as rain. Still, in light of one of the most fundamental guidelines for Greenie consumers--when you consume resources, you consume resources, even if you've changed all your light bulbs and you're a major environmental donor--I can only gently recommend that you sell one of the four eco-cars rather than acquire a fifth.

Since the Lexus allows you to travel as a family--and since to ask you to part with your Tesla Roadster would be downright inhuman--I'd suggest that you ask John Jr. and his brothers to choose the Prius they like best and that you sell off the second. If the three remaining eco-cars might possibly suffice for emergencies, I'd then also encourage you to sell the Range Rover--ideally, if you can, to a certified car recycler.

Did you know that SUVs are up to 85% recyclable?--and that 2002 Rover, as you know, only gets 12 mpg. Which is admittedly in contrast to the more efficient 2010 models, which deliver 14 mpg, despite packing 130% more horsepower, the Sand Launch and Rock Crawl features that many people do find useful for commuting in the Santa Monica Mountains, and a dual-view infotainment touch screen.

Your Rover would, by the way, qualify as a clunker for the intermittent "cash for clunkers" federal program--as would of course any $90,000 2009 Rover that's been in use for at least a year. Unfortunately, though, that wouldn't allow you to reduce your multi-car fleet, since the program requires you to use the cash from your major gas-guzzler to put a brand-new moderate or minor gas-guzzler (with a huge carbon debt to manufacture it) on the road.

So instead, you could send all the Rover's iron, steel, zinc, aluminum, brass, copper, rubber, oil, plastics, and other resources off to do greener work in the world. The five 255/SSR18/XL tires alone could become shoes, mulch, fuel, asphalt, boat fenders, garden ponds, sandboxes, a basketball court, or an artifical reef.

You might consider using some of the proceeds you'll get from turning your SUV into scrap metal and a basketball court to throw a blowout backyard BBQ bash. Organic hot dogs! Tesla test drives! You'll want to make sure it's big enough to compensate for any loss of social status the three teenagers might potentially encounter now that they'll be sharing one Prius.

Then you can give the rest to John Jr., who can use it to buy his share of gas for the Prius, the mountain bike of his dreams, and an annual Metro and bus pass--which is bound to work somewhere in the L.A. area--with enough left over for a modest college fund.

Happy birthday, John Jr.!

Green Me Up, JJ is an occasional advice column. You can e-mail JJ with your burning questions about how to act and think environmentally smart in our complicated 21st-century world.