True story.

I recently visited the local recycling station to drop off some items. While there, I noticed several vehicles just sitting, idling, air conditioning on, doors open – while their owners made several trips back and forth from their cars to the bins to drop off their recycling/garbage.
I suppose I could understand it if your juvenile offspring, canine, feline, or elderly family member were in the car…but no, all your cars were empty.

About an hour later I find myself sitting in my silent, solar-charged, electric vehicle (a 2019 Chevrolet Bolt EV) in a bank drive-through teller line – again listening to the idling internal combustion engines all around me. I could not help but wonder if the drivers of all those legacy vehicles, at the recycle station and now at the bank, were aware of or even cared one little bit about how much fuel and money their highly inefficient vehicles were wasting while sitting there just idling…just burning up so much fuel and wasting their hard-earned money while blowing copious clouds of toxic life and climate harming exhaust effluent into our shared atmosphere…all while the fat fossil fuel pushers laugh all the way to the bank.

The biggest fact about idling that many are probably not aware of: When idling, your vehicle is getting ZERO miles per gallon. If that is not enough to make you rethink idling then check this out:

Now, please consider the following.

I have questions – lots of them:

Do the people who let their vehicles idle for extended periods care at all about the air they breathe? I’m sure most of them do, but maybe they are not in a place where they are able to upgrade to an electric vehicle. OK, I can understand that – I have been in that place.

Answer: Turn off your engine while you wait.

Do they want their children and grandchildren to breathe polluted air – the same air they are polluting by their inefficient transportation choices? I would say no, they do not want their kids to breathe toxic air.

Answer: See the previous answer.

Do they want to send their kids and grandkids off to fight wars over finite, polluting, resources? I sure hope not, what a waste of lives, resources, time, and money.

Answer: See the previous answer.

Are they at all concerned about all the money they are wasting by using such an inefficient fuel source? Many people are not aware of how much fuel/money is wasted by idling.

Answer: See the embedded video.

Are they hot so they need to run the air conditioning to be comfortable. In today’s ever-warming climate change-impacted world – yes, they may be hot. They may have children, pets, elderly/infirm people, and/or ice cream in the vehicle with them. Heat could harm these individuals/frozen confections.

Answer: Get an EV. They do not need to idle an engine to keep the AC/heat on. Their HVAC system runs off the traction battery and is far more efficient than idling an internal combustion engine just to run the HVAC system – and it does not pollute the air.

Have they ever thought about what they will do when the finite fuel source that powers their vehicle becomes harder to find* and eventually runs out? Will their legacy vehicle become a yard ornament, a monument to the energy sources of the past?..or will they sell it before its value bottoms out and it becomes a stranded asset. *When this happens these finite fuel sources will become far more expensive thereby creating even more environmental destruction and even more wars to acquire them.

Answer: They will either pridefully pay a premium to continue driving/idling their legacy vehicle – or they will upgrade to electric.

I do not fault most* of them because they are products of the culture we live in. Many are just living day to day, blissfully unaware that many things in their comfortable, predictable, comfort zone are not exactly what they seem.

They are complacent in their societal and self-imposed little boxes and they do not and will not step outside because their fear of change stops them. They are not bad people – just everyday good people who have not or can not try thinking about what their life would be like if they took the needed steps to make it better and made a change. Many of us find it very hard to change, and to think about tomorrow, even though change is the way of nature and tomorrow is all we have.

*The ones I fault for these problems are not the ones who created these technologies – they did what needed to be done with what they had, and without their ingenuity and resourcefulness, we would not be where we are today. The ones I find the most at fault are the ones who are intentionally trying to stop positive progress from happening, the ones who have loads of money and resources tied up in the toxic energy and transportation choices of the past, and those who promote the continued use of these toxic products that are harming all of us and all our shared futures.

Answer: Step up and step outside of your comfort zone. Change is the way of nature. Change is good.

All these things are most concerning to me.

These are only a few of the reasons why, a decade ago this month, my wife and I chose to make the switch to driving fully electric vehicles powered by locally sourced renewable energy whenever possible.

Electric vehicles use almost no energy when sitting still therefore: Driving electric = no idling = no wasted fuel, no wasted money, no polluted air, no degraded future.

Think about it.

Sadly, many still refuse to think about it or accept it so this is still many of us…

…but there is hope on the horizon.

Only you can prevent the next generation from becoming addicted to the finite and highly expensive* subscription to dependency that the big oil pushers keep pushing. *Expensive in out-of-pocket costs, environmental costs, health costs, energy security, and national security costs.

It is time to fight for our independence from fossil fuels. It is time to fight for a cleaner, healthier environment for our kids, and grandkids, for all our futures.

It is time to go electric and go distributed domestic renewable energy sources. It is time to kick the dirty old fossils to the curb and vote with your money by investing in companies and technologies that work to make a better future for us all.

These changes may take time, but as long as we are all moving in the right direction we are all doing good things.

Kill the idling.

Kill your idle mind.

Think.

Do good things.

Be the change.

Leave the world better than you found it.

Improvise, adapt, overcome, evolve, survive, thrive.