Like a golf kart
If a car engine that idles for 50 minutes burns on average one liter of fuel, 50 cars waiting at a stop light for one minute will waste just as much fuel. And that's still 2.4 kilos of CO₂ sent into the environment.


Imagine a city like Montreal with all its intersections and traffic jams during rush hours. We're talking about tons of CO₂ produced on a daily basis. On a national scale, if every driver cut their idling time by about 10 minutes a day, we could save nearly 4 million liters of fuel and reduce our CO₂ emissions by up to 3.5 million tons. This is tantamount to taking almost one million vehicles off the roads.

What if all vehicles ran like my little golf kart in the Baskatong Reservoir? Can you imagine how much more fuel we could save? Needless to say that our wallets and Mother Earth's lungs would breathe more easily.

So I ask the question: if car manufacturers can make hybrid vehicles and golf karts that produce zero emissions at idle, why can't they do the same with regular vehicles? If someone has a logical and credible explanation, it will be my pleasure to include it in my next feature. Is it just me or wouldn't it be just as simple, given the technology and resources at the automakers' disposal, to make gasoline-powered vehicles shut their engine upon coming to a full stop? Of course, I realize it would cost more, but it doesn't matter! If all vehicles were like that, consumers would have no choice and they would buy the vehicles anyway. And think about the benefits for the environment!

In the meantime...
The best thing to do is to pay more attention. We leave our engines running to warm up the interior of our cars while we wait for someone, talk with a friend, briefly stop at the convenience store, let the train pass by or stop on the side of the road to make a phone call. Until automakers find the miracle solution (as far as I'm concerned, I would spy golf kart manufacturers!), we can all make our own little effort to reduce our CO₂ emissions. Here are some suggestions :

• Use the engine block heater;
• Warm your car for just 30 seconds before taking the road;
• Shut the engine if you need to stop for more than 10 seconds;
• Avoid using a remote starter.