Unclear on the Concept

So the other day I saw a bumper sticker that said, "Spill, Baby Spill -- Stop Offshore Drilling." It had a Greenpeace logo on it, but I don't know if it was an official Greenpeace sticker because it looked a little amateurishly drawn.

It was on a Toyota, which you might figure because that make of auto (one of which proudly squires this Friar on his appointed rounds) is known for its fuel economy. Someone who wants to see offshore oil drilling, like that in 2010's Deepwater Horizon disaster, ended would want to drive a fuel-efficient vehicle in order to reduce fossil-fuel use.

Was it a Prius, the gas/electric hybrid that cuts down gasoline use by supplementing its internal combustion engine with an electric one? Prius drivers point out that by using the battery-powered electric motors in their cars, especially in urban driving, the help reduce CO2 and ozone emissions in areas that have a lot of those gases because of the larger number concentration of automobiles. Well, no.

How about a Yaris, the subcompact model sometimes marketed as an Echo? The hatchback model, known as a Toyota Vitz in Japan, get an estimated 63 mpg in Japanese city driving! Surely someone who wants to end offshore oil drilling would feel comfortable driving one of these little gas-sippers! No, again, sorry. It was actually a pickup truck.

So, of course it was a Toyota Tacoma, the company's compact truck, the latest models of which get in the upper 20s or lower 30s in the miles per gallon race. The Tacoma is in fact the current Friarmobile, although mine dates back a few years and can't boast those kinds of numbers. Urk. Sadly, no, the sticker was not on a Tacoma.

It was on a Toyota Tundra, the full-size pickup the automaker began offering in 2000. Moreover, it was a V8 crew cab Tundra, which at more than two tons is just about the biggest thing Toyota makes that's not a Land Cruiser or a part of their joint venture with Mitsubishi to build airplanes. Brand new out of the box, the Tundra can only manage 20 MPG on the highway (about 20 percent less than my Tacoma with 230,000 on the odometer notches) and in the urban environment where I saw it, that figure drops to thirteen mpg.

Opposition to offshore drilling is a legitimate position to hold, with fair arguments on its side. Many people do hold it. Many others do not. But it would seem to me that if I were going to advocate for an idea that would amount to smaller amounts of gasoline on hand, then I would best drive a vehicle that would use smaller amounts of gasoline itself. Or at the very least be a little shy about proclaiming that advocacy on a platform that is by some lights the very definition of the reason we're having to drill offshore in the first place.