• Americans bought 2.8 million SUVs as of November 2000--17 percent of all vehicles sold last year.

• The Ford Excursion, at 7,600 pounds, seats nine, gets 12.5 miles per gallon and weighs the equivalent of three Honda Civics. In its lifetime, a Honda Civic emits 40 tons of carbon dioxide. A Ford Excursion 134 tons.

• Crashes between a car and an SUV killed 5,447 people last year. That's over 1,000

TERRY LABAN

more people killed than in crashes involving two cars, despite the fact that car-to-car accidents are more common than car-to-SUV accidents and that there are twice as may cars than SUVs on the road.

• The fuel-economy average for both cars and trucks is at its lowest point since 1980.

• Federal law allows SUVs, which are classified as light trucks, to emit 30 percent more carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons and 75 percent more nitrogen oxides than passenger cars.

• Federal law permits SUVs to waste 33 percent more gasoline than passenger cars.

• SUVs spew out 43 percent more global-warming pollutants and 47 percent more air pollution than an average car.

• Cars and light trucks are a major source of global warming, as each gallon of gasoline pumps 28 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

• Driving an SUV that gets 13 miles per gallon rather than an average car for a year wastes more energy than leaving your bathroom light burning for 30 years or your color television turned on for 28 years.

• America's cars and light trucks alone produce nearly 20 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide pollution--more carbon dioxide than all but four countries worldwide.

SUV Web Sites

• www.toowarm.org is the Web site of the Sierra Club's Global Warming and Energy Campaign, which is working to toughen fuel-economy standards for all motor vehicles.

• www.suv.org is headquarters of Friends of the Earth's Roadhog Reduction Campaign. changingtheclimate.com celebrates taking direct action against SUVs by tagging them with bumper stickers that read, "I'm Changing the Climate! Ask Me How."

• www.baaction.org/SUVticket lets you print out an "SUV driving ticket" that can then be placed on the windows of SUVs.

• www.ucsusa.org is where you will find the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that tells citizens, "The choice of vehicle that you drive has a greater effect on the environment than any other choice you make as a consumer."

• poseur.4x4.org is a site chock full of SUV satire and humor aimed at "SUV poseurs," the 90 percent of SUV owners who never drive off road.