​Unnecessary vehicle idling wastes six billion gallons of fuel per year, and contributes to smog, air pollution and the buildup of CO2 , increasing global warming, according to the US Dept. of Energy. For every 10 minutes your engine is off, you'll prevent one pound of carbon dioxide from being released.
Hats off to our Saint Luke School for leading the way with signage for car pool lanes, which reads:
Engines Off!
 
The no-idling practice helps avoid a “hot spot” of exhaust pollution that is especially bad for children and elderly people, not to mention the environment.
 
PTAs may be opportunities to spread this practice among other local schools. The US EPA offers flyers and information with facts and suggestions for school and school bus focused idle-reduction campaigns. Typing Idle Free Schools toolkit into your browser will bring you to links for the EPA’s Turn the Key, Be Idle Free campaign.  
For personal vehicle drivers, the US Dept. of Energy website includes an Idle Reduction Tips sheet, some of the suggestions include:

• Except in traffic, turn the engine off if you’ll be static for more than 10 seconds, such as while running an errand, waiting for someone, or at a long stop like a railroad crossing. 
• With modern gasoline engines, idling is actually harder on your engine than shutting it off. 
• Look for opportunities to “turn the key” at fast food drive-throughs, the drive-up teller at banks, or drive-through pharmacies.  
• The many businesses that offer curbside pickup are another chance to just “turn the key” when you will be stopped for more than 10 seconds.
•  Engines off means no gas use, no engine wear, and no emissions.

Frequent “excessive idlers” include delivery and trades vehicles that fill our streets daily as they perform delivery rounds of our numerous online purchases, food deliveries and serve our home repair and maintenance needs.  In addition, numerous construction vehicles are often seen lined up and waiting at new building sites, engines running. Awareness may get us thinking about how to influence these “excessive idlers”.
Knowing the facts may give us the incentive to create new habits that are costless, painless and will benefit everyone.  We can each do something, we can start, we can talk about it and with small acts raise our awareness.

​Committing the Catholic Church in all its forms to a seven-year campaign to care for God’s Creation, Pope Francis fully recognizes the many facets of the challenge before us, and his support team in the Vatican has outlined the different ways we can take action to meet that challenge.  There is no doubt that each and all of us can contribute in response to one or more of the imperatives that the Pope has laid out. The Laudato Si’ Action Platform’s goals come directly from the Pope’s encyclical, urging us to:

• Respond to the Cry of the Earth, addressing the direct causes of the climate crisis by limiting greenhouse-gas emissions through less pollution and adoption of non-fossil energy alternatives, supporting biodiversity, healthy oceans, and preservation and restoration of natural environments.
• Respond to the Cry of the Poor, increasing our awareness of the dramatic global and local disparities in access to resources and economic well-being that threaten the health and lives of billions of our fellow humans, noting that the climate crisis is worst for those most vulnerable and least responsible for the human contributions to causing it.
• Embrace Ecological Economics, finding ways toward longer product lives, greater reuse and recycling of material resources, and working toward a circular economy, one freed from the myth that ever-expanding material production and consumption can be maintained from the fixed resources of our already heavily-exploited planet. 
• Adopt Sustainable Lifestyles, improving the energy efficiency of our buildings, vehicles, and practices, reducing food waste, guarding soil health, husbanding fresh water, and increasing our awareness of the environmental consequences of our individual and family choices.
• Spread Ecological Education, learning and teaching each other the truths of our relationship to God’s creation, the harm we can do to it, the good we can do in protecting and restoring it, and its immeasurable value to our lives.
• Adopt Ecological Spirituality, recognizing that every interaction with God’s creation is an interaction with God, with His plan for our lives, and with His love poured out for us in our tangible, vital daily reality, offering new chances for gratitude, prayer, and worship.
• Engage Together as a Community, discerning, planning, and acting to create the framework of policy, culture, and practices that will motivate each of us to participate to serve God and each other by preserving His wonderful, bountiful, beautiful creation.

 
The question is “What plans will we, the people of Saint Luke Catholic Church, conceive and carry out, addressing these goals, and doing our part to achieve the Laudato Si’ Action Platform over the next seven years?”  

​“Teach us to discover the worth of each thing, to be filled with awe and contemplation, to recognize that we are profoundly united with every creature as we journey towards your infinite light.” (LS 246)

Six years ago Pope Francis issued his first major encyclical, Laudato Si’, calling for all of us to care for God’s creation and thereby each other on a global basis, eliminating waste and reckless damage to the environment, and restoring health and life where greed and short-sightedness have squandered or ruined God’s most precious gifts to us and endanger the most vulnerable among us.  
 
Last month, Pope Francis put before the church a seven-year campaign – the Laudato Si’ Action Platform – intended to convert those concerns and moral imperatives into deliberate remedial and positive actions.  We are called to undergo an “ecological conversion,” to reflect together, plan together, and act together through our groups at all levels – our families, schools, our institutions and enterprises, and of course through our dioceses and parishes.  
 
The Action Platform is described on the Vatican website ​(https://laudatosiactionplatform.org) as “a unique collaboration between the Vatican, an international coalition of Catholic organizations, and ‘all men and women of good will.’” And indeed it may be unique in its length, its scope, its focus on meaningful actions, and its intent to involve the whole Church in all its organizations and people.
 
Saint Luke and other parishes are asked to make their own community commitments to the Action Platform by submitting to its Franciscan secretariat their specific plans that align with the Pope’s goals, ready to undertake them starting on October 4th.   
 
What should our parish community consider and plan to do our part, responding to the Holy Father’s call for all Catholics to demonstrate their care for God’s creation? The Care for Creation Committee will be thinking and discussing possible parish actions.  
 
Next week we’ll summarize the Pope’s ambitious stated goals for this major effort.  During the summer we’ll suggest possible projects and ideas to undertake at St. Luke’s, and we invite you to join us with your ideas and your participation as we create a plan and exercise our obligation to care for  God’s creation and all of us who share it, led by the Holy Father. 

Soon we will be hearing much about the Church’s Laudato Si’ Action Platform which is intended to bring the Universal Church together in ​action to Care for Our Common Home. The Action Platform launches on the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, October 4, 2021, following a month-long worldwide ecumenical celebration of prayer and action to protect our common home known as the Season of Creation. This global celebration began in 1989 when the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch proclaimed a World Day of Prayer for Creation and is now annually embraced by the worldwide ecumenical community.

This year the theme is A Home for All? Renewing the Oikos of God. In Genesis God set a dome over the Earth. From the word “dome” we get such words as “domicile” and “domestic” — God puts us all — all people, all life — under the same domed roof — we are all in the house, the oikos of God. And God gave us humans the ministry to take care of and cultivate this oikos of God. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others have called the oikos of God “the Beloved Community,” a community in which all are equal members, though each has a different role.
 
Think of this period from September 1 to October 4 (Season of Creation) as a quasi-liturgical season dedicated to prayer for Creation. Prayer is a powerful experience and a tool to raise awareness and foster transformational relations and ministry. Let this Season be a gateway to our commitment to the Laudato Si’ Action Platform.
​ 
See, www.seasonofcreation.org for a more complete compendium of ideas for celebration and themes for each week of the Season — e.g.:
A Just Home for All People 
Wisdom from Our Home Planet
Peacemaking as Home-Building
Praying for Our Home Planet and its People 
A Home and a Hope for the Future
 
Some activities include:
Ecumenical Prayer Service for the Season of Creation
Integrate creation related themes into Sunday Liturgies
Organize a Creation Walk or Pilgrimage
Encourage Sustainable Living Practices