Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Make a Difference. Stop Idling your Car

Imagine being in the presence of a child struggling to breathe. What if that child were your own? In some parts of North American asthma rates among children are four times higher than they were 20 years ago due to pollution generated by vehicles. Almost 2 out of 10 children in Canada have asthma.

In Toronto alone 1,600 people, including children, die prematurely every year because of poor air quality. Often their deaths are terrifying.

Now Consider This
We would need to plant 30 million trees to absorb the air pollution resulting from Greater Toronto Area drivers idling 5 minutes a day for one year, according to the Clear Air Partnership.

Do you idle your vehicle? Because I know the last thing you would want is to contribute to the deaths of others, including children.

Five Ways to Ruin your Car and other Calamities
Idle your car for more than 30 seconds. This is an excellent way to
  • Ruin your spark plugs and wear down your engine as quickly as possible.
  • Waste copious litres of gasoline. Who cares if prices are over $1 a litre and climbing. What better investment for your hard earned cash than wasting fuel?
  • Kill people. Maybe people you know.
  • Warm the planet, which kills people and species. Runaway global warming will devastate the biosphere.
  • Be the target of auto theft if you like to idle your engine while eating your rice krispies.

Help Make a Difference

  • The most effective way to warm your car is to drive it, even in cold temperatures. The car is designed to warm up while driving at a moderate speed. Idle for no more than 30 seconds.
  • When stalled in traffic for more than 10 seconds, turn off your engine (Hybrids excepted). You use more fuel while idling than restarting your engine.
  • Make a difference. If your workplace has a fleet of cars, help instigate a no-idle policy.

Don’t Believe it? Check it out.
Natural Resources Canada and Clean Air Partnership deliver the facts.

Kids deliver the appeal....






Forward this message
Spread this message to your friends, families and colleagues. This is a Call to Action for drivers to stop idling.


In the News
Discussion on Peak Oil is moving from conferences and the alternative press to the business sections of major newspapers. If you don’t know what Peak Oil is, it’s about time you found out.

High-Priced Oil Adds Volatility to Power Scramble
The New York Times reports that world thirst for oil is outpacing supply.

Rise in global energy demands 'alarming,' IAE says
So reports the Globe & Mail.

NBC's Green Week
On the lighter side, looks like NBC is getting serious about the colour green.

Other News

BBC – The Greenroom

Ecoshock Radio

Green Bloggers

Grist Magazine

Monbiot

My Green Element

New York Times – Environment

StopGlobalWarming.org

Tree Hugger

Zerofootprint Blog

3 comments:

lemming5 said...

Exellent u-tube idling news item.I've seen that same movie (only it wasn't a movie),many times in my neighbourhood in real time.It seems that as a society we are overly generous in supplying these tax supported schools with busses galore and nobody says nothing.Isn't politics wonderful(for the bus manufacturers)but not for the environment.

Anonymous said...

Great work.

Cheryl McNamara said...

Check out the article from Utne on car idling:

http://www.utne.com/Environment/Idling-Engines-Are-the-Devils-Workshop.aspx