Re: Letter “Overseas travel hard on environment,” which appeared in the Jan. 24 edition of Northern Life.

Once upon a time, people used to dump garbage out of the windows of their cars, and then a law was passed that no longer allowed that. Most people stopped using our roads as dump sites.

Now, of course, people say “What were people thinking, dumping garbage out of car windows?”

Now fast forward to today’s idling control situation. Sure, habits die hard and people will be resistant to turning off their engines, even though the evidence supports them doing so. And then fast forward 10 years from now, and folks will say “What were we thinking, idling our cars?”

We must be patient and wait for the educational campaign that will help convince the majority why we should stop idling.

We all need to adapt to changing times. The term carbon footprint wasn’t used 10 years ago, and was certainly not in our vocabulary when we used to travel extensively.

We now buy offset credits, and we rarely fly. We have gone to great lengths to reduce our carbon footprint and continue to find ways to do so. Being responsible and doing the right thing does not mean that we stopped living.

Mercedez Quinlan and Gerry Labelle
Greater Sudbury

Posted by Vivian Scinto