The little girl and the tail pipe: the image that haunts me

This is an image that spurs me on to keep at it. For me, it represents two key points.

• The lack of awareness on what our habits are doing to kids
• The exhaust is an attack on her future planet

Maybe if I didn't have two kids (ages 11 and 12), I wouldn't be so consumed by this. But then again, with all the headlines about climate change and the ticking "carbon bomb", you wonder why more people with children aren't.

Tell your friends and neighbours to stop their engines whenever they can. It's so simple to do, and it can lead to an entire shift in thinking to protect our children's future.

Wasted fuel, damaged air: the numbers for Halifax

People ask: "how do you come up with those numbers...the amount of gas that's wasted and CO2 pumped into the air,"---by people idling?

Natural Resources Canada does that work for us. Simply visit here: The CO2 Calculator

You'll find an easy to use calculator where you can plug in idling time and cost-per-litre for gas, and voila, you have the damage.

HRM is broken down into several areas whereby you can actually identify the numbers for specific areas like Dartmouth, Lower Sackville, Eastern Passage, Hammonds Plains and so on.

For Lower Sackville, as an example, I used 9 minutes a day of idling at $1.00 a litre for gas. Here's the results:

If every driver of a light-duty vehicle in Lower Sackville avoided idling for 9 minutes a day, they could prevent 7.84 tonne(s) of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere each day.

That's 2,859.93 tonne(s) per year!

That's enough CO2 to fill The Sackville High gymnasium 486 times.

Motorists in Lower Sackvile could collectively avoid wasting 3,320.1 litres of fuel worth $3,320.10. On an annual basis, that's savings of 1,211,836.5 litres worth: $1,211,836.48.

Click on IDLE-FREE bucks on the right. Keep one as a reminder in your car; you'll save yourself several fill-ups a year by avoiding idling for just ten minutes a day.

Kids plead with grown-ups in video: stop your engines

Kids want adults to stop idling their vehicles whenever possible. Needless idling is affecting their health and the future of their planet. It also costs a lot of money.

The Children’s Clean Air Network (CCAN) is a network of like-minded partners with one goal in mind for Halifax Regional Municipality: reducing vehicle emissions which will improve the quality of our air and reduce the threat from climate change. CCAN was born out of a grassroots reduced-idling campaign in Kingswood subdivision (www.kingswood.ca).

Like-minded partner organizations include: Clean Nova Scotia, The Ecology Action Centre, The Lung Association of Nova Scotia and the Halifax Regional School Board. CCAN also collaborates with local environmental and business organizations, including the Eco-Efficiency Centre.

CCAN seeks to apply its strategies and tactics across HRM to assist the municipality in becoming a Canadian leader in reducing vehicle emissions. Needless vehicle emissions are a serious threat to the health and future of our children and a waste of resources. CCAN seeks to educate the public on the seriousness of this threat and to help children be heard on this issue.