Posted on 08/06/2008 9:24:28 AM PDT by PROCON
Each day during the school year, a long line of cars sits idling outside Lake Oswego schools, potentially damaging the environment of the very children they're picking up.
Three Lake Oswego teenagers decided the idling has to stop. It's an easy fix: shut off the car. The hard part is getting people to act.
Jacob Shimkus, Emily Carlson and Sierra Sweigert call themselves the Green Teens, and their plan is to place "No Idle Zone" signs at every school.
"The generation above us is leaving all of this to us, and it's up to us to decide what we're going to do about it," Shimkus said.
Recycling isn't enough anymore, they said.
"We're reaching a point in the environment where we may be causing damage we can't repair," Carlson said.
The teens represent both Lake Oswego high schools: Shimkus is a sophomore and Carlson is a junior at Lakeridge, and Sweigert is a sophomore at Lake Oswego.
But saving the world isn't easy. First, they need school district approval and a thumbs up from principals at all of the schools. It's unlikely to be a controversial decision, but it does take time.
(Excerpt) Read more at oregonlive.com ...
Heck, I shut the engine down to save gas.
When a car is idling the catalytic converter is kept hot and functioning at optimum efficiency. Also, various sensors and other emissions related components that keep the vehicle running as cleanly as possible, work their best at normal operating temperature as well. When a car is shut off the catalytic converter cools down and has to be reheated to perform optimally. When a car is first started it emits more pollutants than at any other time during its usage. Largely due to the fact that it requires a richer fuel to air ratio in order to start than it would require at idle. I would guess that these little “skulls full of mush” are doing more damage than good to the environment with their little campaign to make adults bend to their will. I know facts rarely dissuade the watermelons (the green on the outside red on the inside folks).
We need to teach our kids *how* to think for themselves.
School teaches them *what* everybody else thinks.
Big difference.
Ah, to be a teen aged yute and have all the answers again!!!
These kids are further proof that government indoctrination and brainwashing do work. Unfortunately.
You should have to be at least 30 to vote.
Dear Jacob, Emily and Sierra(? What? No "Moon Unit?"):
There is a reason why at least a complete high school education is expected of all of us before we are entrusted to participate in the workings of government. Ignorant and arrogant is a dangerous way to go through life.
Although the age qualifier is equally important, and no assurance whatsoever that you're not still as dumb as a brick, them's the rules and deal with it.
The occasional dead battery (specially in inclement weather) will far outweigh any "earth-saving" delusions you might have, to say nothing of the time and aggravation that are caused to adults.
Let's make a deal; if you also consider serious penalties for using cars as toys (aimless driving, "hot-rodding" and irritating the neighborhood), we may have a deal.
By "serious", I'm thinking a 6-month suspension of driving license.
What say you?
Gosh, I never heard that one before. There's a cure for this. It's called "walking."
An even better solution - these kids can walk home - save the planet and themselves from obesity at the same time!
No idling means no heat or AC while sitting there.
Good for you.. But no one should be forced to shut their engine down when picking up their kids. This is like the idiots here in Ohio who banned people from smoking in their own cars while waiting to pick up their kids on school property - absolutely unenforceable. As Andrew Jackson once said - They made their law...now lets see them enforce it.
I don't know this kid but I will say this.....if he really wanted to help the gas crunch and the famed "global warming" or whatever, he would lobby that no HS students could drive their fancy schmansy cars to school....
now that will go over like a lead balloon...
I hate to break it to you kid, but we had ONE tv in our house growing up, ONE car, ONE refrig, no air conditioning, no swimming pool, no hot tub, no separate rooms for each kid, grew our own vegetables, and my mother washed ALL the clothes in a wringer washer....you start with hot water for the whites, and move on to lights, then get to the darks, ALL in one tub of water, and then she would hang everything out to dry on the clothesline, even in winter....
so kid....when YOU live like that, YOU may start lecturing US..the older generation.....we grew up without most of the things you have, and we are probably better recylers and gas savers and energy savers then any 10 teenagers.....so there!
I have always been an energy hound and I don't need this teenybopper to tell me what to do....
Make the kids ride a smelly, non-airconditioned school bus. Don’t spoil these brats by picking them up after school.
The crumbcrunchers should walk or ride their bike to school. High schools should ban driving by students. There should be an activity bus to take kids home after after-school activities.
Driving on college campuses should be banned until the senior year. All colleges should have non-polluting vehicles to transport students around campus. Each class should also be held outdoors one day a week, rain or shine.
Hey, let's really put the GREEN in GOING GREEN!
I'd say something about Bravo Sierra but they'd take it the wrong way.
Prove it, butthead.
Then, stop using any form of combustion engine yourself - including the bus, Mom and Dad's cars/SUVs, the trucks that haul your produce/meat/soap/clothes/everything else, the water system (which uses either electric pumps powered by combustion or uses engine-driven pumps directly)...
THEN we can talk about your non-existent "right" to force your stupid will on anyone else.
I will allow you a "carbon-credit" for the hearse ride when you starve/dehydrate to death.
Can you tell I have zero patience for youthful stupidity in activism?
It would make me want to rev my motor right in front of those kids.
The Lake Oswego teachers might consider a useful class exercise, such as, for example, developing estimates of the carbon skyprint of the air traffic required to support the professional sport industry in North America.
Turn the brainwashed youths’ concern into an educational opportunity. They are having a teachable moment.
Basically they are merely breaking the iron-clad rule of minding your own business; things such as the program they propose are administrative issues and not democratic ones.
Nobody really likes a busybody.
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