I think this cultural blame on SUV/truck drivers is misguided, and I pedal a bike to work and share a car with my wife. While I try to make responsible decisions, the impact I can have on the environment is tiny in comparison to large corporations and billionaires. Largely my “sacrifice” is meaningless, past giving me exercise and making me feel good about my decisions. If every middle income or poor person in the world did their best within the system to make responsible environmental decisions we would still be headed to, and in, a climate catastrophe. Policy has to change and corporations have to be forced into making more responsible decisions. An electric car is still an incredibly inefficient use of energy. But I can’t force my city to add public transit to make not owning a car viable. Large properties and spread out infrastructure is also killing the environment, but I can’t personally force city councils across the country to scale back single family zoning in favor of multi use zoning.

The main place regular people are failing is not what they drive, but who they vote for, imo.