Climate Change and Idling Cars, What’s the Connection?
- NPG
- June 21, 2022
- NPG Commentary
- 2 Comments
June 28, 2022
Climate Change and Idling Cars, What’s the Connection?
Will Turning Off Your Car Save the Planet?
Eliminating the unnecessary idling of personal vehicles would be the same as taking 5 million vehicles off the roads. – US Department of Energy
When climate change comes up in conversation, there’s bound to be a mixed reaction. One person may seek to brush it off, saying things like, “I think everything is fine,” and, “that kind of thing won’t happen.” Alternately another person might say, “It is vastly concerning, and we need to focus on solutions as soon as possible.” Within both groups, each individual would likely own a car, and climate change is propelled by pollutants – like the exhaust from a running vehicle.
The United Nations defines climate change as “long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. These shifts may be natural, such as through variations in the solar cycle. But, since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas.” Given this definition, it is easy to see how fuel-burning cars offer no respite to climate change and are, in fact, major contributors to the problem. And, it stands to reason that fewer pollutants would enter our atmosphere if drivers were to turn off their engines while stationary.
The US Department of Energy has a lot of information available on this topic, such as:
- Idling reduces a vehicle’s fuel economy, costs money, and creates pollution.
- Idling for more than 10 seconds uses more fuel and produces more emissions that contribute to smog and climate change than stopping and restarting the engine does.
- Today’s gasoline and diesel vehicles do not suffer damage by being turned on and off.
Private incentives are offered nationwide and state incentives are available in 39 states. Concurrently, idle laws targeting or including passenger vehicles are active in 27 states. Of course, we know that human activity is the root cause of pollution, and the surest path toward a sustainable future is to slow, halt, and eventually reverse population growth. Alongside this goal, we can also effect change by examining our daily activities and eliminating damage-causing practices whenever possible – like turning off our cars when we will be idle for more than 10 seconds (not in traffic!) or even choosing to walk. Data illustrates that these small changes make an impact, even if we cannot immediately see the difference. Final verdict: turning off our cars may not be enough to save the planet, but it would certainly help.
To learn more about idle laws and incentives in your area, click here.
To read more about population issues, click here.
Ron
We have way too many people for our current lifestyle to be sustainable long term. Short of billions of people suddenly vanishing nothing is going to help. I’ve watched Texas go from a nice place to live to where you can’t find a quiet place unless you drive hours to get away from the people. So how long does it take for a car to warm up in winter before the ice goes away on the windows? What about summer when it is 95+ degrees and 130 or more in the car. Are you going to get into a car that hot without running the a/c for a few minutes first? Oh then maybe we could shop later in the evening or at night to avoid the heat, except that even Walmart now closes earlier. Not everyone lives in a nice cool climate with everything within walking distance. I guess they want us in tiny apartments stacked on top of each other with no car. Everything including work would be within walking distance. Then we have parks and roof tops with gardens and solar panels. There would be parks scattered around town with trees and grass. This all sounds great in theory. Remove the homeless and clean up crime before you even attempt that. I for one will not live that close to my neighbors. I used to live in a subdivision, and it was so noisy I could not sleep. Some houses had 4 families living in them paying one set of school taxes for all their children. My taxes tripled in 2 years to pay for them. I had rude neighbors always looking at whatever I was doing. I was afraid to cook on my grill without keeping a close eyes on my food if I went inside to get something. The neighbors were always watching like they wanted my steak. I had to deal with people across the street burning trash in their fireplace. Many times I could not go outside because of the smoke. It smelled like something toxic in the trash was burning. It was illegal to burn trash, but the city never enforced it. You want people to stop idling cars?
I do get your point, but there are other things that need to be done as well. I could go one for pages, but I won’t. Bottom line is there are too many people, and we are still letting more across the border every day. Insanity….
Jerre McManus
Every time I see a long line in a fast food Drive-thru with people idling their cars for 10 minutes or longer I really wonder what they are thinking?