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No one is ever fully consistent in their beliefs; revealed preferences vs. stated ones, etc. Even in the early 2000s it was a common talking point among Conservatives to accuse Hollywood of hypocrisy regarding fossil fuel usage.
Regarding air travel wasting fuel, I have never found this argument convincing. The plane will consume roughly the same amount of fuel whether it is full or empty. The alternatives to plane travel so much slower and worse, that flying may be more economical anyway and justifiable due to lack of good alternatives. If you want to travel international, are you going to spend weeks on a boat? Or a week in a car or train if you want to travel across the US? You're stuck flying. I think the waste argument is much more valid when comparing SUVs to cars because they both perform the same function.
Airlines stop running flights that are regularly empty.
The environmental alternative is to not travel.
A non-trivial chunk of the contradiction here is that a disproportionate number of environmentalists are upper middle class westerners who refuse to reduce their consumption remotely in the direction of the poverty levels that preventing climate change would require (absent the widespread use of nuclear energy).
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Once you become a family of 6 or more most cars won't have enough seats for everyone.
Having enough seats and seat belts was not an impediment in my youth when the open bed of a pickup could carry several or the extra long lap belt of a bench seat could easily stretch across at least two, sometimes three children.
My preference would be a compact pickup like the Datsun 620, or a station wagon with a 3rd row, those are not options offered by the market or regulators.
I'd agree that, in common use SUV and cars perform the same function, I'd also be fine with heavy taxes on SUVs owned by the childless, childfree, childlight, etc. , an excess capacity tax.
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