American drivers not completely sold on Earth Day

Sorry Sen. Gaylord Nelson, we're not completely sold.

After seeing a giant oil spill in Santa Barbara, California, the senator proposed the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, as an environmental "teach-in" to raise awareness of the dangers.

Forty-five years later, we're far from weaned from crude oil -- remember the BP Oil Spill? Where do you stand on the Keystone XL pipeline?

And we like our big cars.

Yes, today's small SUVs get better gas mileage than yesterday's economy cars.

But fewer and fewer of us are really serious about getting top mileage out of that gallon of gasoline, or using none of it at all.

Not only are owners of gas-electric hybrids and battery electric vehicles less likely to trade them in for new versions of their vehicles, they're more and more likely to buy an SUV, according to Edmunds.com.

A lot of those hybrids and electric vehicles were purchased three years ago when gasoline was at a near-record high. Plus, we have to wonder how much YouTube has affected purchase decisions. If you watched videos of that massive pileup on snowy Interstate 80 last week, or many of those Russian dash-cam wreck videos, you'll be more likely to want more sheet metal around you when you take to the road.

While SUV sales are strong, prices are being cut to sell more electric and hybrid vehicles, and production is even being halted until the backlog is sold.

Edmunds found that 22 percent of people who traded in their hybrids and electric vehicles so far this year bought new SUVs, up from 18.8 percent last year and double the 11.9 percent rate three years ago.

But don't expect the price of gasoline to stay down forever; oil production naturally drops off as the price drops, until a tighter supply forces prices to climb.

And, watch for sales of economical vehicles to rebound at the same time.

If you're feeling adventuresome with your money and think oil still has a future, there's a new way to invest in the oil industry -- crowdfunding.

Like gofundme or kickstarter, Crudefunders.com allows ordinary people to invest between $1,000 and $5,000 in the oil or gas industry, such as drilling, production, water or royalties.

Sounds interesting, but we wouldn't advise investing more than you're willing to lose.