Fury and the Art of Patching Up an Old Truck

Like clockwork here in Pennsylvania, my 1991 Chevy C1500 pickup was tested by the State to ensure it was safe for the roads and met environmental standards. I have been fighting back and forth in my mind regarding the environmental part for years now. How can I square my desire to grow a lot of my own food, by local goods, organic goods, and environmentally-safe / petroleum-free products whenever I can with my utilization of an old truck?

Similar other struggles have been vexing me for years, now. I think that dairy cases in shopping centers are about the dumbest things in Creation. They are refrigerators designed to not have doors, yet keep milk from spoiling. How are these things legal? Then, not only is the milk kept cold by open refrigerators in stores, but dairy products are shipped cold and kept in huge fully-refrigerated warehouses while still at the dairy. That, to me, is a broken system. What to do instead?

I started buying ultra-pasteurized milk. This milk is sterilized, shipped and stored warm. This system could save huge amounts of energy costs and air pollution (unless, of course, electricity somehow went 100% renewable), but the containers for the milk are like big juice boxes. This means many different types of material (a product contact surface, structural layers, paper to print on, etc) compressed into one package. Multiple inseparable materials means that this is a package that cannot be recycled or reused.
Damn it! Why can't any of these things be easy!?! So either you can save fuel energy or you can save waste put in landfills. Right, but I was talking about my truck.

I could buy a Toyota Prius or some other foreign-made ultra-fuel-efficient vehicle, thereby adding to the death of American companies, American jobs, and removing one industry where science and engineering is paramount from the U.S. Or, I could hang on to my Fort Wayne, Indiana-made truck until an electric hybrid is made on U.S. soil by one of the (remaining by then) Big Three.

At least this one has a middle ground. I'm looking for a used Chevy car to get me through. I can keep my truck long-term for the utility of having such a vehicle and have a day-to-day fuel-efficient car to keep emissions down.