Idling is good for the environment.

Oh, you didn’t know? And to think just about everybody had it wrong all these years. Imagine that: letting the engine rev while going nowhere is actually a chic green strategy.

Surely this is an inconvenient goof? Not according to Tim Horton's and its rent-a-scientist, Mike Lepage with Guelph, Ont.-based RWDI.

At issue: Tim Horton's is running into resistance from various municipalities that aren’t keen to approve drive-through lanes for the java juggernaut.

Still, Nick Javor, Tim Horton's’ senior VP, Corporate Affairs, had more than one eyebrow soaring skyward when he made the groundbreaking idling-is-good pronouncement.

Adds Lepage: “Generally, the preliminary results show that banning drive-throughs does not provide significant benefits (reduced emissions) to the environment. The study directly compares restaurants with and without drive-throughs. A number of factors affect the findings. These include the burst of emissions from engine starts, the amount of idling that occurs in parking lots due to individuals who leave their engine running while in the store, the amount of ‘crawl time’ that occurs when looking for parking spots and the need for larger parking lots if drive-throughs don’t exist.”

But an analysis of Lepage’s statements would appear to fail the sniff test.

Case in point: the “burst of emissions” when restarting a car engine. According to the Office of Energy Efficiency at Natural Resources Canada, this is misleading at best. For example, the “cut-off time” for idling is 60 seconds. Thus, if a car idles longer than a minute, the net effect to air quality is more negative than a “burst of emissions” upon restarting the engine.

What’s more, NRC notes that any amount of idling that isn’t necessary should be avoided given that idling constitutes an “unnecessary consumption of non-renewable fossil fuels” which creates “unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions.”

The likes of Pollution Probe and the Canadian Automobile Association agree with NRC.

As for the “crawl time” theory as cars search for parking spaces, I wonder what Tim Horton's restaurants Lepage patronizes? Certainly not the ones in my ’hood, wherein acres of spaces are readily available – even during peak periods

However, there'’s an unspoken reason fast-food eateries are increasingly embracing drive-throughs: such infrastructure tends to “externalize operating costs,” notes environmental consultant Usman Valiante. He says processing orders via a drive-through means a restaurant is able to reduce its labour costs and operating costs at the expense of air quality.

Bottom line: Like most Canadians, I adore Tim Horton's. But I’m less than enamoured Timmies would embrace such intelligence-insulting spin-doctoring by suggesting that an idling engine is more environmentally benign than a parked car.

Naturally, I'’ll continue visiting Tim Horton's for my daily caffeine fix. But you can bet dollars to donuts you won’t find me idling at the drive-through window.

After all, how lazy can you get?