Idling is for Dummies

The driver of this car idled for half an hour

On a road trip through British Columbia, Canada, on a sunny day in April, I had to wait at a construction site. I shut down the engine, not only because it looked like cars had to wait quite a while, but also there was a sign to do so.

I opened the car windows to give my dog and me some fresh air. A moment later I realized that the driver in front of me hadn't turned off his engine. I walked to him and friendly explained that I had opened my car's windows to give my dog some fresh air. And if he could please shut down his engine. His answer: "No, I will not!" I reminded him that it is also not helpful for the environment, as well as for his car's engine. No way that he obliged...

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Why Do Drivers Idle?

Why are they not better take care of their cars, the environment, or of their purse?  It is beyond me.  And it gets worse: since everyone has a smartphone, drivers sit in their car for twenty minutes on the phone while their engine is running...

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Killing Your Car's Engine?
A cold start means an extreme load for the engine, it leads to faster wear, because for example, the still viscous oil does not reach all lubrication points. 
On top of that, there is a higher emission of exhaust gases, because the fuel consumption is many times higher when the engine is cold.  Projected in this way, a gasoline engine would consume 25 to 30 liters per 100 kilometers.

My advice to drivers! Turn off your idling engines!

Reducing vehicle idling will cut pollution and save you money.

Read more here:

https://www.edf.org/attention-drivers-turn-your-idling-engines

https://www.lanesinsurance.com/idling-vehicles-are-bad-for-a-lot-of-reasons/

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/how-big-a-problem-is-idling-1.5351917

The Trump Factor

This is an excerpt from an article by Evaggelos Vallianatos. He worked at the US Environmental Protection Agency for 25 years. Vallianatos is also the author of 6 books, including “Poison Spring,” with Mckay Jenkins.

The message of the scientists has yet to reach the brainwashed population. Billions of powerless workers earn a miserable living in factories and agricultural enterprises fueled by petroleum. The owners of fossil fuels, meanwhile, keep spreading misinformation, denying global warming and convincing world leaders to dance to the sounds of their music.

In the United States, for example, fossil fuel magnates have president Donald Trump in their pockets.  He denies global warming.  He hired billionaires for running the federal government.  It’s as if thieves were installed in the national treasury.

But Trump is doing much more harm than licensing medieval barons in the looting of the country.  His “deregulation” is not a program of abstractions but a program of extractions.  It is raising the stakes of who lives and who dies.

Polluters now have a dear friend in the White House.  They ignore the flimsy protective laws enforced by Trump’s predecessors.  They open the spigots of pollution all over America.  Their deadly effluents now seep into groundwater, aquifers, rivers, creeks, lakes, and seas.

The gas poisons of polluters reach the atmosphere daily. They originate from countless sources such as: petroleum drilling and refineries, chemical factories, thousands of warplanes and commercial aircraft flying all over America and the world 24 hours a day, millions of cars travelling billions of miles every day of the year, animal farms raising and slaughtering billions of animals every year, pesticides sprayed over hundreds of millions of acres, energy power plants, and military bases.

No one really has a handle on the killing power of this vast air pollution.  But the effects could not be innocuous.  The colossal amounts of largely invisible poisons fill the sky and mix with the soup of long-lasting pollutants that capture solar heat and raise global temperature.

Trump is also behaving like a monarch primarily because he purchased the allegiance of the Republican Party with a trillion-dollar tax cut to the rich and to large corporations, and no taxes on several million dollars of inheritance.  Only rich people inherit property and cash.

This cash has shut the mouths of the Republican-majority senators.  It does not matter what Trump does.  It’s fine with them.  Trump owns the Republican politicians.

Read the full article at CounterPunch:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/26/a-world-of-shadows/

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