You’re just driving a Prius, you’re not saving the world.

The Toyota Prius is awesome piece of engineering and I genuinely think it’s brilliant. It does an average of something like 55mpg, which is really impressive, and I really like the way it works.

The trouble is, most people who buy it are buying it because they think it’s good for the environment, and seem to think they’re amazing human beings because of it.

Now stop me if I’m being stupid, but is there anyone that thinks we’re not going to burn all the oil. At some point soonish, it’s going to run out. So in terms of the environment, does it really matter if we burn it all over the next 100 years, or the next 150. Surely making a car that burns oil at half the rate isn’t going to help the environment at all. The world is billions of years old, and we’re probably going to burn all the oil it’s accumulated in that time in a total of about 300 years. I think we’re all agreed we’re going to burn it all.

So I’ll ask the question again, in terms of the environment, what difference is it going to make burning it a bit slower?

The Prius is a work of genius, it’ll certainly make our oil last longer if everyone has one, which is good. It’s economic to run, which is good. It’s quiet, which is good. You can buy it for all those reasons and you wont be a dick, but don’t think you’re doing the environment a favour, you might be buring it slower, but you’re still burning it, and to a planet that’s over 4 billion years old, the 1 week you might be slowing the burning rate down by doesn’t seem like much.