US Folks avoiding the pumps on May 15th in protest...

Poststructural Pub
1

You may have already heard about this civic action … Will it “fix” things? Nah… but it might make a little difference. It has before. Of course, there is much more to it, and anyone who is serious about it should really carry through with more, but it is a start.

— email text

NO GAS …On May 15th 2007
Proposed Action : Don’t pump gas on May 15th

…in April 1997, there was a “gas out” conducted nationwide in protest of gas prices. Gasoline prices then dropped 30 cents a gallon overnight!

Gas is now over $3.00 a gallon in most places, and is projected to top $4 by the end of the summer, and, as usual, the pattern of ‘start raising the price significantly about three weeks ahead of a major holiday’ is in full repeat.

As we listen to the oil companies whining about how little they make on our gas purchases, all the while registering some of the highest profits in their entire history, we have to ask … how stupid do they think we are?

On May 15th 2007, all internet users are asked to protest high gas prices by not going to a gas station.

There are an estimated 73,000,000+ Americans currently on the internet network, and the average car now takes about $40 to $60 dollars to fill up.

If all users refuse to go to the pump on the 15th, it could make as much as a $2,292,000,000.00 (that’s almost 3 BILLION) dent in the oil company’s pockets for at least that one day, so please, do not go to the gas station on May 15th and let’s let the oil industry see that we are paying attention… they should too.

If you agree, please copy/paste and send this to all your contact list. In any case, please at least hold off buying gas for that day.

2

yeah - but…

I absolutely have to drive to work that day - I can’t do teleconferencing because I have a specific training I have to give.
So sure, I can not buy gas that day, but I’ll just have to get if a few days before or a few days after. I have to USE it that day.

3

$3 per gallon? that all?!?! its like £1 per litre here :stuck_out_tongue: buy a car with smaller engine size :smiley:

4

Yeah, these “gas outs” always strike me as ridiculous. Even in the height of summer we in the US pay much, much less than the rest of the world. Furthermore, if higher gas prices make us buy more efficient cars, drive them less, and use public transporation more, then I’m all for them.

5

Loads can written on that combination of topics. :laughing:

It’s a very big, widespread country here, geographically, and a steep (and long avoided) learning curve. … BUT… the profits realised by Big Oil here are in blindingly stark contrast to the claims of how we really need to be paying more at the pump.

'FI were king…

we’d all have hybrids of some sort, for decades now, and solar power would be in much greater evidence… but that’s a whole nuther discussion. :slight_smile:

6

You’d expect them to, but I still see a glut of SUVs in every parking lot.
I wonder how high it has to got to start encouraging individual change?

Though, I admit, Toyota did have to step up production of the Prius to
keep up with demand…

7

Somewhat prechin to the choir, but I can’t afford the higher gas, let alone the better, more fuel efficient car at this point, and I’m hardly alone in that. Also, more fuel efficient cars are not a new idea at all, but cars in the last few decades have not been very (if any) more fuel efficient than they were in the 1950s… when, legend has it, and I believe it has been substantiated, corporate folk bought up the patent and plans for an incredibly efficient carberator at the time that would have given the public hugely better milage per gallon, and destroyed it. Also, I wouldn’t be anywhere near as irritated by high gas prices if they were actually warrented. Given that, at the current prices (todays price is just about where the top was a year or so ago), Big Oil US made phenominal profits, I just can’t take the claim that we should pay more very seriously. If folks don’t want to be more fuel efficient because it is right, there are better ways to push it than to fatten already enormously fat-cats.

8

Anniemcu, well spoken…I concur.

I think these prices represent the unwelcome realization in the large oil companies that no matter what else happens, Bush will soon be out of office and there will be a sea-change in American politics: they are simply trying to make the biggest profits they can, while they can.

–James

9

I’ll be participating, but I wonder if there will be a spike in gas sales on the 14th and the 16th? Kinda makes us look ridiculous if there is.

10

No matter the reasons for building, selling and buying such monstrocities new, there is another point that must be considered … most vehicles in the US are owned used. They are not the vehicle people would choose if they had the money to buy what they actually want, and so one tends to buy what one can afford that meets the needs. Certainly some folks have very much twisted “want” from “need”, and fantasy is pushed big time in our markets, but all those used vehicles are not suddenly going to disappear from our roadways just because a better, more fuel effiecient, and extremely expensive ‘new concept’ is finally made available, and though they are being parked a lot more than driven due to the high gas prices, it would make far more sense to offer reasonably affordable methods for upping the efficiency of those vehicles than for expecting them to disappear. If you can’t afford to drive it, it is not going to be easy to sell, so you have even less money to put into the better vehicle.

Personally, we have a small SUV (a Ford Explorer, about 10 years old) that we bought used because the insurance company gave us a ridiculously low payment for a car they claimed was “totalled” (obvioulsy not completely, since they sold it to be repaired and resold, and it is back on the streets - note too, that they would not sell it to us :confused: ) … anyway… we needed a vehicle that could carry at least 5 people and had 4-wheel drive and that we could get for the pittance we received for our nice Dodge Caravan, plus what little we had spare at the time, and that was an SUV. So… not all who own and drive SUVs are doing so to show how big, strong, powerful, rich and dismissive of the envirnoment they are.

11

Perhaps that would be the Pogue carburetor (?). The plans were not destroyed, but are held up hopelessly in courts forever. For a while there were people offering build-you-own plans, but you would have to be a machinist with access to some very fine tools to pull it off.

These higher efficiency cars are being priced for the rich. Just as gasoline is now being priced for the rich … or is it? People are using more gas today than ever before. People are still paying whatever the oil companies demand. Are we really hurting that much? All I can say is, Wake up! If it hurts that much, stop driving. If it hurts that much, you can’t afford to have a car. You must be poor, so start behaving responsibly (like a poor person).

A one-day consumer strike will probably not make much difference to the oil companies, especially if they see it coming. Five days - yes, but one-day … probably not. If you can’t afford a five-day consumer strike, perhaps its time too start examining your lifestyle in preparation for the day when either the oil runs out, or it just gets so expensive that you can’t afford it any more.

Even more fundamental to the idea of going to a more oil-free existence than efficient cars is the need to start treating owning cars as a privilege, not a right. Instead of living someplace where you would need to have a car, get a place to live in where you can use public transportation. Instead of getting a job that is far away from your home just because it suits your education or pays well, instead get a job that you can walk or bicycle to. Instead of hopping into a car to go everywhere, any car trip should be a well planned, thoroughly considered act, with costs weighed and consequences understood and accepted.

One thing that always strikes me about people who immediately call for everyone to switch to fuel-efficient cars is the total lack of understanding that no hybrid or fuel-efficient anything has been created so far that is more road-worthy than a golf cart. People around here started getting rid of them after the first winter when they realized these puddle-jumpers couldn’t even handle a four-inch snow drift. What has been produced so far is useless to a large number of motorists who would like to convert, but haven’t been offered a reasonable, working alternative.

But all that self-restraint and living poor would mean deconstructing our current society. It would require us to go back to a carless world where most of us would be unable to travel more than a few miles from the place of our birth for our entire lifetimes. It would mean finding any type of work we could in order to be able to survive (or not). Fluffy notions of “meaningful” employment or “self-fulfillment” through a career would fly into the dustbin.

Personally, I like my big SUV. I think I will continue to use it as I see fit and as I can afford it. I would rather enjoy as many years of overindulgence as possible than to eek out a miserable existence of self-restraint, trying to tell myself how good and wise self-denial is. Let’s face it, we are in the situation we are in today because that old lifestyle was so horrible to live in that people jumped at a chance to get away from it, even though the method used is now proving to be our downfall.

I think Nero had the right idea. From what I have read, he was playing pipes, not a fiddle. :smiling_imp:

djm

12

Amen on the five-day strike, but small steps. :slight_smile:

13

Friend of mine had something like this back in the late 70’s(?)…used to love to tell the story about how the dealership came one day asking for thier ‘experimental, untested, dangerous’ vehicle back…meanwhile he was geting incredible mileage ( in an all-metal tank of a car)…the punchilne was always the same…‘over my mother’s cold dead @ss, you m-fing SOB’ (ex-marines have such a way with expletives)

14

I must have been a marine in a former life. :smiley:

15

I’m going to keep my tank filled till a few days prior, and not refill it till I’m down a lot.

I think that just the fact that people actually do this, even for just one day, is something the companies have to take soseriously even if the thumb their noses at it publicly. If people are pissed enough to do this, they are getting pissed enough to do more. Of coourse, some of us have done more for a long time, but again, that is another discussion.

16

SNOPES states this is just an urban legend.

While I deeply sympathize with the ideas behind it, I can’t imagine it having any real impact whatsoever unless we can all go without gas for a month or two.

Eric

17

18

Can do, in fact buying gas no more often than every couple months is normal for me
but then I live where I live so I can use public transportation.

When I do drive, its my Honda Civic.
My husband drives a Toyota Prius.

19

I moved to my current home location n 1979 to be less than 2 miles away from work. Ok - I was also moving OUT of my parents’ house at the time, but that was 25 miles away from work, so it made sense to move close.

Fast forward to March of this year. While I still work for that same company, I now work at a different job, and my office location was moved to a site 25 miles away from my home - but only 2 miles away from where I grew up!!!

I can’t win!

Seriously, we MUST do something, at least in this area, about mass transit BEFORE we try to move away from oil. I checked into having Noah ride the Metro bus for his volunteer work at the Zoo this summer. The Zoo is 6 miles from our house. In order to get there by 9am - he’d have to catch a bus at 6:45am, go all the way south downtown (about 10 miles away), make a transfer, then go 8 miles north back out to the Zoo (the 6 miles from our house is more east to west). I think his CO2 “footprint” will be a lot less in the long run if Tom or I drive him!

And there’s not even an option, if I wanted to, of riding mass transit to work. And I can’t afford to move back out there - compared to the farming community I grew up in, it’s now a “suburb” of $500,000+ houses!!!

20

http://www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/nogas.asp