THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

American drivers are once more dumping their high mileage vehicles for oversized overpriced gas guzzlers that, in their eyes, shows off the size of their balls in a way they never could otherwise.

The single most effective action that most Americans can take to help reduce the dangerous emissions that cause climate change? Buy a more fuel-efficient car.

But consumers are heading in the opposite direction. They have rekindled their love of bigger cars, pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles, favoring them over small cars, hybrids and electric vehicles, which are considered crucial to helping slow global warming.

So far this year, nearly 75 percent of the people who have traded in a hybrid or electric car to a dealer have replaced it with an all-gas car, an 18 percent jump from 2015, according to Edmunds.com, a car shopping and research site.

In 2008, President Obama set a goal of a million electric cars on the road by 2015 in the United States, but the total is now around 442,000, including plug-in hybrids. This year, electric and hybrid sales have dropped to 2.4 percent of new-car purchases.

Falling gas prices have made big, heavy cars fashionable again, said Michael Sivak, the director of sustainable worldwide transportation at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute. In fact, demand for trucks, S.U.V.s and vans has rebounded to historic levels after they dropped sharply in 2008, when gas was $4 a gallon.

“People have very short memories about the price of gasoline,” Dr. Sivak said.

That spells trouble for the environment. So-called light-duty vehicles, including S.U.V.s and pickups as well as cars, account for 16.2 percent of all greenhouse emissions produced in the United States, Dr. Sivak’s research shows, making them the biggest source of emissions that individuals control.

Reducing tailpipe emissions “is perhaps the most important thing Americans can do,” said Andrew Jones, a co-director of Climate Interactive, a think tank. “We’re doing the opposite.”

Of course we are doing the opposite. We may say that climate change is important to us but we are Americans, climate change takes a back seat to showing off our manhood. And if the price of gasoline goes up again, we will blame whoever is in the White House and switch back what we are dumping now.