On a typical afternoon, you'll see Dana Clark knocking on the window of some car idling in front of the school across from her house. Politely, Clark will explain that turning off an idling engine is something that moms can do to help clean up Utah's filthy air.

But what's really needed, says Clark, is a more systematic approach — not just a few moms knocking on a few windows, but a whole state full of moms lobbying for change.

Clark is one of the co-founders of Utah Moms for Clean Air, begun seven months ago by another Salt Lake mother, Cherise Udell. The two women, joined by Cameron Cova, Debbie Sigman and Lori Taylor, spoke Friday night at First Unitarian Church's environmental ministry lecture.

"They're not afraid to say 'Our kids deserve clean air,"' said Utah State Rep. Chris Johnson, D-Salt Lake, who introduced the group. She will file bills this legislative session to limit engine idling and reduce freeway speed limits on red burn days.

On Utah's Capitol Hill, Johnson said, Utah Moms for Clean Air is already seen as a force to be reckoned with — "and not just by progressives."

The group has more than 800 people on its e-mail list, has met several times with Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., helped organize a Utah Clean Air Alliance summit last month and hopes to help launch a million-dollar ad campaign to educate Utahns about steps they can take to fight pollution. Recently, said Udell, the CEO of Rocky Mountain Power called to set up a meeting with the group.

Udell, the mother of a preschooler and a toddler, is working on a master's degree in environmental health at Yale, but recently put her degree on hold so she can devote more time to Utah's bad air.

She was moved to start the moms group after reading a Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment estimate that each red alert pollution day in Utah exposes residents to the equivalent of smoking a half pack of cigarettes. "Just by growing up in Utah, along the Wasatch Front, our children can statistically expect two years shaved off their lives due to air pollution," according to a Utah Moms for Clean Air pamphlet.

Sixty percent of Utah's air pollution is caused by cars, trucks and buses, said Cova, who is chairwoman of the Utah Moms transportation working group. Utah Moms for Clean Air is lobbying for public transportation as a priority over construction of the Mountain View Corridor and will lobby the state to adopt stricter car-emission standards.

The group has also been working with the Environmental Protection Agency and local school districts to retrofit diesel school buses so they run more cleanly, and has called for a moratorium on the construction of new coal-fired power plants in Utah and elsewhere.

On Wednesday, the group is sponsoring a bus trip — "The No Coal Express" — to Ely, Nev., to attend an environmental hearing about a proposed coal-fired power plant there. On Monday, from 3 to 5 p.m., it is holding a poster-making party at the Sprague Library. The slogan was written by moms, so it's polite: "Clean Energy, No Coal, Please!"

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E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com