Have you noticed the empty car parking spaces in Auckland city car parking buildings - the ones that are designated to be for 'hybrid' vehicles. If you own one of these ridiculous vehicles you get priority parking. No one uses them because there are so few hybrids in use. The empty spaces (paradoxically) increase the city's carbon footprint because more vehicles have to continue the ascent to a higher level.
The logic of rewarding owners of hybrid powered cars with prius-ority parking is discriminatory and denies the reality that all cars congest the city, causing wasted fuel consumption for all and the emission of tons of toxic exhausts into the atmosphere. Recent research has suggested that air pollution kills over a thousand people in New Zealand each year. So, while in 'silent running' mode (ala a U Boat), your Prius may be emitting little more than an unpleasant smugness into the atmos but it is holding up the guy in the smoky diesel Citroen that you sold to buy you stupid little jalopy. If people with hybrids really cared for the environment they would catch the bus or ride a bike.
I think I shall attach a little sail to the roof of my limo (attached by one of those little suckers that you might find attached to a kid's bow and arrow set). Then it will be a Hybrid - harnessing both the throbbing power of a 2.5 litre, 24 valve Swedish donk and the fickle wind. Let the bureaucrats argue that my efforts to save the planet are any more meaningful than the feeble Prius and, therefore any less worthy of being placed at the head of the queue.
Maybe the people who own the hybrids are riding bikes and catching the bus . . . hence the empty parking spaces!
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