Fridays for Fumes is a globally organized, volunteer movement that aims to promote, support, and make more widely accessible any form of motorized sports, hobbies, and leisure activities. In the face of a social climate that increasingly tries to paint the use of gasoline engines for fun and sport as improper and unjustifiable, we celebrate and defend people's right to enjoy these activites, and open them up to larger parts of the population.
While we acknowledge the need to protect our natural environment, we urge people to also not forget one of the main goals of the environmentalist movement: to enable current and future generations to enjoy a life worth living. For many humans, internal combustion engines are part of what makes life fun and enjoyable. Every day, new people discover the natural, inherent appeal of gas engines and get hooked for life.
Like our obvious inspiration, the Fridays for Future movement for environmental activism started by Greta Thunberg in 2018, we are a grassroots movement started by just a few driven individuals. Our origins are in Switzerland in 2022, but our goals and ambitions are global, and our cause is shared by people around the world. It's a call to carry our fondness for exhaust fumes into the world, and to the people. Through various activities, we hope to make more people discover their hidden fondness for motorized fun by demonstrating its allure. Nobody has discovered their affection for exhaust fumes without having been exposed to them!
Fridays for Fumes is a hopeful new wave of change, trying to inspire millions of people to discover and then defend their enjoyment of recreational motoring, and we'd love for you to become one of us!
The goal of the movement is to put moral pressure on policymakers, to make them listen to the motorsports athletes, two-stroke fans, exhaust fume enthusiasts, and everyone else who enjoys using gasoline engines for fun and sport, to include and respect their points of view when deciding on action to limit global warming. In the face of necessary action against climate change where it really makes a difference, and where equivalent but cleaner sources of energy can be found, areas where the burning of gasoline is an integral part of the fun should be exempt and protected. Let's save the world, but make sure we don't restrict the very pleasures that make it worth living in!
Our movement is independent of commercial interests and political parties, and knows no borders. We are not endorsed or supported by "big oil", and our supporters span a wide range of the political spectrum.
We take action because we care for the human achievement and cultural heritage that is the internal combustion engine, in particular two-stroke engines, and their use for recreational purposes. We want to preserve for current and future generations the splendid experiences of smelling freshly-burnt premix fuel, hearing the rev of a powerful two-stroke engine, and seeing the thick, blue, pungent exhaust fumes waft away into the countryside.
Every day there are more of us, and together we are strong. Everyone is welcome. Everyone is needed. No one is too small to make a difference.
Every Friday, we take our scooters, dirtbikes, mopeds, and any other "polluters" to the streets. We do our garden work using gasoline-powered tools which also cover the neighbourhood in thick, pungent exhaust fumes. Or we simply charge our phone on the gasoline power generator for once. We enjoy our motorized fun while sharing the delicious exhaust fumes with the people around us, in the forest, in the countryside, or in the middle of town. We awaken people's hidden fondness for fresh two-stroke fumes by letting them take a good, deep breath of them!
•
We support, through financial donations and volunteer efforts, events and activities that try to bring motorized leisure activities to more people. A particular focus is on teenagers, who are just turning old enough to start their own motoring journey, and who are exposed to a lot of influencing from the environmentalist movement, trying to get them to condemn gasoline engines and steer them away from getting to like them. A young person that is hooked on motorsports will defend their right to practice their hobby in the future! A first-hand experience of twisting the throttle, feeling the engine, watching and smelling one's first self-produced cloud of exhaust, is more deeply striking and long-lasting than any sweeping appeal to one's guilty conscience. Or, in other words: a few laps on the karting track have converted many a young environmentalist!
•
Many who have discovered the joy of burning gasoline for fun, lack the means or opportunities to indulge in their passion. Especially for young people still living at home – the most important demographic for ensuring that motorized recreation will stay a popular pastime in the future – often have great difficulty finding ways to be able to enjoy motors. For them, we organize events where they can burn gasoline to their heart's content, using vehicles and machines graciously offered by our volunteers for use at the occasion – naturally, with an unlimited fuel budget! On the other hand, we also broker private donations, allowing young people to fulfil their previously unattainable dreams of their very own motorized two-stroke vehicle, as well as monthly fuel "allowances".
•
Motorsports are still heavily male-oriented, discouraging half the population from joining and exercising these amazing and modern sports disciplines, and starving the movement of volunteers that will fight to keep recreational motoring alive and well. We take efforts to promote motorized recreation specifically to the female and non-binary population. One of the greatest qualities of recreational motoring is its inclusivity and openness to everyone, a great equalizer for humanity.
Our full website will feature a calendar of activities, reports on our activism and previous events, support and guidance on low-threshold ways for everyone to get into the recreational use of gasoline engines, and information on how to join and support our cause. Until it is finished, you can reach us through gro.semufrofsyadirf@ofni.
Follow us on social media: YouTube / Instagram / Facebook
Logo credit: Pollution icons created by Smashicons - Flaticon.
Photo credits: Karting by D100a (CC 3.0 by-sa); Female motocross rider by Kevin Jarrett (Unsplash license).
