Getting there

Oprah hath spoken. We must turn off our car engines while waiting to pick our children up at school.

Oprah Winfrey's 2007 Earth Day program featured EnginesOff.org, a small (and sparse) blog dedicated to a simply powerful idea: When it comes to keeping CO2 out of the atmosphere, every minute counts.

EnginesOff.org has just a few links, but each is worthwhile. Founder Lynn Romanek's segment on the Oprah Winfrey show is there for inspiration, as is a downloadable sign (PDF) for promoting the idea at your kid's school.

(Romanek has science on her side, by the way. Studies have found that restarting a car uses the same amount of fuel as idling for as little as 6 seconds. Let the car idle for anything beyond that, and you're wasting gas.)

Turning off your engine is one way to green your trip to and from school each day. Here are others:

Ride a bike
The simple act of riding a bike can be hair-raising when you do it with your children. When dozens of families pour onto the same roads at the same time before the opening bell, it takes some organizing.

The Marin County Bicycle Coalition's Safe Routes to Schools site offers a treasure trove of tips, tools, lesson plans, and print-outs to help make your own pedaling safe and bring others along for the ride. The resource center is especially awesome -- with links to model programs throughout the United States. 

Take a walking school bus
Some good ideas know no borders. The notion of a "walking school bus," pioneered in New Zealand, works anywhere there's fresh air. Don't talk to me about rain or snow. When I was a kid... 

A walking school bus is pretty much as it sounds: A parent walks a designated route, "picking up" schoolchildren at stops along the way.

WalkingSchoolBus.org tidies up the concept for U.S. audiences. International Walk to School Month is this October.

Carpool
Sharing a ride to school has the green benefit of taking cars off the road. Another plus: All those mornings that aren't your turn. Let's be honest.

There's money to be saved, too. RideFinders.org has a simple calculator for figuring out exactly how much; the site skews toward business commuters but the logic holds for parents as well.

Entering "find carpool" in the Yahoo! Search engine results in dozens of matching services, but if your school is anything like ours, the best way to find collaborators is to ask around the school yard.

After you've turned off your engine, of course.

Sam Silverstein is the editor of Yahoo! Green.