America's oil resources and energy-conservation efforts have two major enemies: the increasingly popular sports-utility vehicles and full-size pickup trucks.

Few SUVs transport young soccer players and other groups and few pickups haul cargo. Most of the behemoths are driven empty--for vanity's sake.

Every day you see only owners driving their SUVs and pickups back and forth to work, the store and other commuter destinations.

And gargantuan sizes aren't their only wasteful features. Most have four-wheel drive, a gas-guzzling device rarely needed or used in most of urban and suburban America.

Not many of their owners actually risk getting their $40,000-plus monsters damaged or dirty in off-road situations.

Owners of SUVs, pickups and other six- and eight-cylinder vehicles should pay heavy tax and license penalties. And the extra revenues should be used to research and develop energy-efficient transportation.(3 DECEMBER 2000)

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