Your column in the Dec. 29 issue of the Inlander, "Time To Do Something," was for me just the opportunity I'd been waiting for, as I'd been wanting to tell the Inlander about my efforts over the last year to make a difference.
This all started one day last spring: I was waiting in the car and observed the many vehicles idling through the various drive-thrus that I could see from my vantage point. I had only recently finished a novel by Neil Young titled Special Deluxe. In that book Neil goes into detail about how significant the carbon emissions being produced by all of our cars are impacting the increasing climate change. CO2 emissions are the biggest contributor to the depletion of the ozone layer. That reduction of the ozone is accelerating global warming.
On that day I found myself so frustrated with the ignorance of all those drivers idling that I was motivated to do something. I wrote a letter to the White House asking President Obama to take some sort of executive action to stop the frequent and unnecessary use of drive-thrus across our nation.
Several months later, I received a reply from President Obama himself. That letter came on beautiful White House stationery and had his signature at the bottom. I was so moved by his response that I was then motivated to do something more myself. How could I start a movement? How could I bring people who are like minded on the subject of climate change together, to slow down the convenient use of the drive-thru?
Please go to no-dts.com. There you and anybody who wants to make a difference can take the pledge. NO-DTs is: Good for the environment, good for your well-being, good for the local economy, and it won't cost you anything.
Roger J. Helm
Spokane Valley, Wash.
