My wife and I just spent the holidays in and around Jamestown and Williamsburg. These are wonderful settings that are great places to reconnect with simpler times when waste was not a national past time. They are also places where you can reacquaint yourself with a pedestrian lifestyle and step away (to a certain extent) from the automotive din so ubiquitous in most of our lives, which brings me to the idyll.

On our first day we decided to be chronologically correct and visited Jamestown. As we were walking towards the visitor’s center we passed a white Ford Excursion with Texas plates. For those of you not familiar with the Excursion picture nearly 19 feet of pure consumption powered by a 7.3 liter V8 diesel engine. And this one was on full-idle sitting in a parking lot near a river that flows into a bay that is imperiled, in part, by vehicle exhaust. The day was cool but not too cool and the vehicle was empty.

We walked by the rumbling to tour the grounds thinking someone had run into the visitor’s center to worship at the Temple of Convenience. But when we returned 15 minutes later, the giant SUV was still running and still empty. For want of better options, we reported the vehicle to the on-site security folks. The vehicle finally left when we were in the exhibits but the woman at the ticket desk told us the SUV ran for a full half hour before continuing on its way.

Wow, where do I start? Do I bust on the idea of a vehicle that should never have been built and certainly should not have been given a fuel efficiency exemption? Do I take a swing at Ford for taking us down this ill-advised and consumptive road where the already too big Expedition exploded into the even bigger Excursion? Do I criticize the driver for holding on to an 80-year old myth about the need for idling diesels (http://www.nmenv.state.nm.us/aqb/ghg/documents/IdlingMythsandFacts.pdf)? And what about Texas or my wife and I who could have been more aggressive in seeking out and educating the driver on exhaust etiquette and climate change?

In truth, we all share a part of this. The solution is an informed and active public. A public that understands the connection between engine size and nitrogen levels in the Chesapeake Bay and other waterways. A public that understands the energy security issues associated with wasting fuel and demands fuel efficiency and right-sized vehicles. And a public that is willing to say (politely): Turn off your damned car, the rest of us are trying to breathe here.