Report says giving up SUVs will power the poor
According to the World Bank’s yet-to-be-released World Development Report 2009, there are between 25 million to 40 million gas-guzzling SUVs in the United States today. The report says that if the entire U.S. were to shift to more fuel-efficient cars en masse, more than 1.6 billion people in the world currently living in the dark can be provided electrification without any increase in the levels of greenhouse gases that lead to climate change.
Phasing out the oversized SUVs, which were outselling cars only until recently, would reduce global emissions by a whopping 36 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, according to the report.
In comparison, the report says, providing the very basic electrification to the poor of the world would add 45 million tonnes of greenhouse gases.