We are in an age of environmentally friendly products, a heightened awareness of environmental conservation and sustainable living. In terms of cars, you say environmentally friendly, you think hybrids and electric cars – perhaps the best known of which is the Prius.
If we take the Prius as a symbol of going green and promoting sustainable energy use, these trucks are the anti-Prius. They relish everything that environmentally friendly is not: non-renewable resources, pollution, excessive fuel use… it is all very very anti-green living.
Some truck enthusiasts are intentionally producing copious amounts of diesel exhaust, spewing black smoke into the air as a form of political protest. It’s called “rolling coal.” Vocativ covered the subculture in an article last month, reporting “coal rollers” can spend thousands of dollars altering their rides to produce ever greater amounts of smoke.[…]
“I run into a lot of people that really don’t like Obama at all,” an unnamed Wisconsin seller of smoke stack kits told Slate’s David Weigel, explaining some of the rationale behind the movement. “If he’s into the environment, if he’s into this or that, we’re not. I hear a lot of that. To get a single stack on my truck—that’s my way of giving them the finger. You want clean air and a tiny carbon footprint? Well, screw you.”
Sure, it is a pain to have to recycle all the copious packaging we receive our daily bread in, but this is perhaps a bit much, no?
You can find more info about ‘rolling coal’ at The Huffington Post.
