Month: March 2008

Cnn.com has an article up about the cities that have already participated. Also, google.com has gone all black for today in honor of the event stating, “We’ve turned the lights out. Now it’s your turn – Earth Hour.” I hope everyone will participate!

Tomorrow, March 29 at 8 pm (local time) is Earth Hour an event created by the World Wildlife Fund. All you have to do is simply turn of your lights for an hour. That is one easy thing to do for the environment. I plan on sitting in my backyard star gazing and enjoying the gorgeous weather.

Are you turning of your lights tomorrow night?

As you may know gas prices keep going up and I don’t think they are ever going to go back to around $1.30 a gallon. I find that a lot of people really like to complain about this fact, but that only a few are willing to make changes to their driving habits. Some people are driving less and trying to combine errands, but what about speeding and wasteful idling? These are the two biggest gas waster I see in my neck of the woods (besides the fact that the Phoenix area is so spread out). I constantly see people start their car and run back in the house to get something or do something. Honestly I understand this in the summer and you have little ones and don’t want them to get third degree burns when you put them in their car-seats, but right now the weather is absolutely gorgeous and there is just no reason for it. I also frequent the post office where about one or two SUVs happily sit in the parking lot with their engines running while the owner is inside. I really don’t get the purpose of this one, is it that hard to turn the key in the ignition? This suburban mom blogged about how her five seconds of useful idling at start-up wastes 16 gallons of gas a year. Her estimated 3.5 minutes a week of idling, which is a very small number and I see a lot of cars idling for longer than that on just occasion, wastes 16 gallons of gas a year. The price of gas is averaging about $3.15 per gallon in Arizona and that would be $50.40 a year. How much gas money are you wasting?

Now let’s tackle the speeding issue. This is a big gas waster according to a cnn.com article. The article states that for every 10 miles an hour you go over 60 adds about $.54 per gallon of gas. It is not unusual for the vehicles on the nearby highway to be traveling around 80 mph. Is it worth the extra $1.08 a gallon? Now I used to be a speed demon and I did not stop because of gas prices. I personally stopped because I found it less stressful then when I was trying to weave in and out of traffic. My husband made fun of me because he thought I drove like a grandma and then when he saw I was consistently getting about 4 mpg more then him, he decided to give it a try. We now both drive like snowbirds and don’t care! Are you willing to slow down to save a few bucks and at the same time reduce your impact on the earth?

I am personally working on my idling right now. I don’t ever idle for long, but I did find I was idling while adjusting the mirrors and seat (when you share a car and there is about a foot of height difference between the drivers you do this a lot). I was also idling in parking lots while waiting to back out and getting my seat belt on. I am not perfect I still idle and sometimes dink around more than I should with the engine running but I am trying to change my habits.

Have any gas saving, driving tips to share?