Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

The internal combustion engine was a good idea at the time,
but now there are just plain too many of them - 17 million in
Canadian cars and trucks - and they produce more carbon dioxide than the earth can recycle. So the leftover gas hangs in the atmosphere, trapping heat and raising temperatures.

Global warming is no longer a frightening theory, it is a frightening fact. Our crops, our weather, the sea level, and all the world's creatures, from microbes to polar bears, rely on a narrow temperature range. Last year, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - 500 scientists comprising the world authority on the subject - confirmed that the temperature is going up, sooner and more radically than previously anticipated. But, the IPCC added, we can reverse the warming trend if we burn less fossil fuel. For most of us that means, first and foremost, in our cars.

"Think seriously about which car you buy next," says George Iny, president of the Automobile Protection Association, Canada's auto-industry watchdog. "If you are not going on safari, do you really need an SUV? Why haul around a ton of extra steel every time you go to the store?"

These days, the average new car is less fuel-efficient than the one it replaces. Nearly 50 per cent of Canada's new-car sales are gas-guzzling, CO2-spewing vans, small trucks and sports utility vehicles; and the average SUV emits two to three times as much greenhouse gas as the average compact car. But even if it takes a van to transport your family, there are vans and there are vans: you can drive an efficient four-cylinder model that travels six kilometres on a litre of gas, or a six-cylinder, four-wheel-drive behemoth that can only manage two. Which you choose makes a ton of difference in C02 emissions every year. Literally.

"The best deal for the planet, and for saving yourself money at the pump, is to buy one of the new hybrids," Iny say. Hybrid cars couple a small internal combustion engine with an electric motor so that you burn gas only part of the time. The rest of the time, you are running on electricity generated as you go; a computer switches things back and forth.

There are two hybrids currently on the market in Canada, the Honda Insight which gets a remarkable 28 kilometres to the litre (but has only two seats) and the 5-seat Toyota Prius which gets 18 kilometres to the litre. Buying a hybrid has a further advantage: every sale sends a message to the auto industry - and to friends, neighbours and co-workers. When he is not walking or bicycling, David Suzuki drives a Prius.