— Musings —06.22.2011 08:46 AM
Touchy, touchy Dippers
I was sent a photo, last night, of one of the 20 SUVs NDP leader Andrea Horwath plans to ferry her and her staff around the province in the coming provinmcial election. Some of you asked questions: why does she need twenty SUVs? Beats me. Are they hybrids? Beats me. I don’t know what the size of the resulting carbon footprint will be, but I sure know that it sure tells us a thing or two about Andrea’s ego footprint.
Anyway, after the pix went up on Twitter and so on, her fart-catchers promptly went ape. Below, just a couple of them – from Jeff Ferrier, who is a “former” Horwath press secretary (who sure acts like a “current” press secretary, while at Toronto Community Housing), and Mike Rosenstock, one of Horwath’s personal staff who bills himself as a “researcher.” Uh-huh.
Anyway. I think the Horwath gang are upset because someone caught their newly-wrapped SUVs on camera – they’d clearly been saving them for some announcement. My free advice: stop parking your big secrets in plain view, Dippers. Oh, and stop being such sucky babies: you guys (federally and provincially) are fast developing a reputation for being able to deliver a punch, but never being able to take one.
Now, get ready for a pile of outraged/hurt comments from New Dems in comments. They can’t help themselves!
They’re hybrid. A bit of research would have told you that. 🙂
And we have a winner! The first chippy Dipper!
I’m not a dipper, Warren. 🙂
Uh-huh.
They are actually powered by the passenger’s feet. Like the Flintstones. Very environmentally friendly. Hardly any carbon footprint. Get it?
Yabba dabba doo!
So there are 20 of these SUV hybrids. ? This opens the question — is it more environmentally friendly to drive 20 hybrids or one bus? How many hybrids could you drive before you exceed the amount of fuel a bus would use to drive the same distance?
Based on some figures pulled off the internet:
A Ford Escape gets approximately 49 miles per gallon of gasoline.
A charter bus gets approximately 6 miles per gallon of diesel.
Gasoline: 2,421g/gallon of carbon
Diesel: 2778g/gallon of carbon.
(Okay…. Say a drive of 49 miles… the bus would consume 8.16666 gallons of diesel…. that’s approximately 22,687 g of carbon…. divide that by the carbon in a gallon of gasoline)
…. They’re limited to around 9 hybrids. More than that and they exceed the carbon released by the bus.
I have awesome readers on this little web site.
Does anyone even care about “carbon footprints” anymore? I thought the AGW hoax was over, and even if it weren’t these 20 SUVs (or all the carbon taxation/crap and trade scams in the world for that matter) ain’t gonna make a lick of difference anyway.
Dammit Paul!
Can’t you see the hypocrisy!
And all evident on Twitter and Facebook where most voters go each hour to find out what their fellow Canadians are thinking.
Andrea, have your social media people manage that message better!
People only car about their carbon foot print whe gas is over $1.35 a litre.
If it’s less than that we keep buying a driving pick up trucks, suvs and large sedans.
Well said Michael, a lot of commuter vehicles, at least out here on the left coast, are in the “bigger than they need to be” category……Govt needs to raise the canadian equivalent of CAFE more, but they wouldnt want to reduce consumption, or vehicles carbon footprints would they….
” A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single footstep”-Chinese Proverb…..besides, the optics of having a whole fleet of SUV’s(albeit US made hybrids) are terrible……..
I heard that they left their platform out in plain view, but nobody noticed.
Continue to maintain that this will be a darned fun summer to be in Ontario.
The Liberals desperately want to maintain power _somewhere_. The Tories desperately want to consolidate power everywhere. The Dippers desperately want to prove that they are becoming the main alternative to Team Blue everywhere in the country, and especially in Ontario.
And we have nearly four months to go before election day!
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think the guy with Bob Rae as his party leader should be throwing the term hybrid around lightly. I actually wonder whether Bob will be encouraged to have a high profile during the Ontario campaign in some twisted attempt to sink the Dippers by association.
Outrage from the Neiman-Marxists!…lol
Hypocrites….from Jack Layton in subsidized housing, to a fleet of SUV’s…..
Difference between an Escape and an Escape Hybrid, on the highway: about 3 miles per gallon. Big whoop. Couple that with the footprint of all the extra electrical and battery equipment, and you ain’t buying much a difference when you spend all that extra cash. You’re buying prestige, status and ideology, and little else.
If they really gave a crap about the environment they’d be showing up in something like a Ford Fiesta, the most fuel-efficient sub-compact for the year 2011 in Canada. And in terms of fuel economy, blows the doors off the Escape Hybrid.
“That’s not really an SUV. Come on”
From Wikipedia:
“The Ford Escape is a compact SUV sold by the automaker Ford Motor Company introduced in 2000 as a 2001 model year…”
“…it is marketed by Ford as part of its traditional SUV lineup”
“A hybrid version of the Escape was released in 2004, making it the first hybrid SUV”
Me says it’s a SUV.
Hey, go easy, it is the NDP’s first taste of the greatness of truly suckling the public teat.
Remember, socialism is great when you are spending other people’s money.
If the party leaders use any jets for their campaign, it won’t really make much of a difference what kind of cars are used since emissions from jets are far worse and leave a much bigger carbon footprint.
I’m guessing there will be some jet travel if anyone plans to campaign in Northern Ontario.