12-year-old: Pump up your tires to save ANWR
While the rest of us sit around jawing about ANWR, Savannah Rose Walters is doing something simple and profound. The dimpled 12-year-old has launched a campaign to get drivers to inflate their tires properly after learning this will save more fuel than drilling for oil in the Arctic Refuge could produce.
Her campaign, called "Pump 'em Up," even includes a website, where others can get involved by downloading a flier to stick under windshield wipers or hand out in parking lots.
"Even if you don't care about the Arctic, if you pump up your tires, you won't have to buy as much gas, and we'll all breathe cleaner air," she recently told the Tampa Tribune. The inspiration for her campaign was planted in a lesson on the Arctic environment in her second-grade class several years ago. If only we could all be so inspired at such a young age, the world would be a better place.
And Savannah is right, of course. Properly inflating your tires will save gas and money. Adding a little extra air will save you even more. Automakers set recommended tire pressures on the low end to ensure a comfortable ride. But most tires can easily handle extra pressure (the recommended maximum pressure is printed on every tire's sidewall). If you can handle a little more road feel, you could boost your mpg by a couple points simply by adding extra pressure.
As Savannah notes on her website, the U.S. Energy Department reported in 1995 that underinflated tires waste 4 million gallons of gasoline daily in the U.S. alone. That's way more fuel than even the most wildly optimistic estimates for production volume from ANWR.
[Technorati tags: ANWR, oil]
Her campaign, called "Pump 'em Up," even includes a website, where others can get involved by downloading a flier to stick under windshield wipers or hand out in parking lots.
"Even if you don't care about the Arctic, if you pump up your tires, you won't have to buy as much gas, and we'll all breathe cleaner air," she recently told the Tampa Tribune. The inspiration for her campaign was planted in a lesson on the Arctic environment in her second-grade class several years ago. If only we could all be so inspired at such a young age, the world would be a better place.
And Savannah is right, of course. Properly inflating your tires will save gas and money. Adding a little extra air will save you even more. Automakers set recommended tire pressures on the low end to ensure a comfortable ride. But most tires can easily handle extra pressure (the recommended maximum pressure is printed on every tire's sidewall). If you can handle a little more road feel, you could boost your mpg by a couple points simply by adding extra pressure.
As Savannah notes on her website, the U.S. Energy Department reported in 1995 that underinflated tires waste 4 million gallons of gasoline daily in the U.S. alone. That's way more fuel than even the most wildly optimistic estimates for production volume from ANWR.
[Technorati tags: ANWR, oil]
posted by Matt Weiser at 9:31 AM
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