Anti-Climate Change: Rollin’ Coal

Do you own a large Diesel truck? Do you “Roll coal?”

In this article from Vocativ, they expose the interesting American sub-culture of “Rollin’ Coal.”  Apparently, manly men, who measure their masculinity in horsepower and tire size are modifying their fuel systems and adding switches that dump more fuel into the motor which elicits a black smoke from their tail pipe or added smoke stacks. There are online communities and a robust culture around blatantly pump climate change causing carbon into the atmosphere.

Some guys are spending up to $10,000 modifying their trucks so that they can blow smoke in the way of hybrids and others who think that saving the environment or not unnecessarily polluting is simply a bad idea. Obviously, if climate is an issue for you, this comes off as fairly shocking and unenlightened.

The tradition started at tractor pulls. For those that don’t know what a tractor pull is, a tractor pull is an event (usually in a rural location) where competing tractors (and now trucks) will pull weighted objects and sometimes each other. Whoever passes the center line first loses. In order to win the pull farmers would modify their trucks and spew out huge clouds of black smoke.  Now the height expense, height, and pollution capability of a truck is a measure of manhood. A man is is truck, crappy truck equals crappy man and who wants to be a crappy man?

I might start rolling coal from my Volkswagen, its a diesel afterall…..

You can enjoy the burgeoning genre of “country rap” with its many Rollin’ Coal references here.