Club Homepage Forums Classified Ads Buy & Sell - Everything But Airplanes Don't pump gas on May 15th!

The REALLY sad part is, Franco and Matthew and Trev and most of the other members overseas are reading this thread and wondering what the heck WE'RE complaining about (yeah... I know... I started this thread!)

Anyone remember the 70's

SPEED
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Not just for saving lives
Saves a ton of fuel too!!!

This won't work for all the reasons that Ed Pataky has stated. A boycott works if we buy less or none of the product, not simply shift the status quo one day. This "gas boycott" e-mail has been circulating the Internet since, well, last century. You can read more about it here:

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

As is usually the case, if an un-solicited e-mail tells you to do something and "tell all your friends!", then your best course of action is to forward it... to the "Recycle Bin".

I agree 100% with THAT statement. Lots of times messages such as this have "phishing" algorithms imbedded in them, designed to e-mail the addresses of recipients back to the "phisherman" to add to their spam list. I don't normally open forwarded e-mail that shows multiple addresses in the "sent to" line. Most anti-virus software isn't looking for this, and it can be missed. (Anti-spam software looks for this.)

Anyway, I got this from an old friend, who probably sent it to me with tongue in cheek, more as a joke than anything else!

I agree with the skeptics here that it won't make much if any impact one way or the other. There are more affective ways to make a statement. But, I still think that if the majority of motorists made it known that they aren't buying gas on a particular day, and followed through on it, it's just novel enough to gain national media attention. That in itself is a message to all who hear of it afterwards... we can be organized!

I still think it's an interesting social experiment that can be done without hurting anybody, and I still don't see the harm in trying it. It's already circulating the internet, and I have to wonder how many readers will not be buying gas on May 15th because of it?

I'm participating! That's all I really meant!

I'm wondering if you missed my point Ed. I'll use my own situation as an example: We once had a need for a large SUV but now we don't. So we bought a 50 mpg car and replaced a 15 mpg car. It's perfectly comfortable for 4 people. Not everyone can do this, for a variety of reasons, but if everyone who COULD make this kind of change WOULD do it...the difference in consumption nationwide would be massive. COULD/WOULD...that's my point.

IF 4 seats (ok, 5, but 4 comfortably), modest cargo capacity, etc. works for a person and they drive any significant number of miles per year, AND they're ready to buy a new car...THIS is the route that makes the most sense. Don't sell conservation short. It's the only way in Hell for some of us to "Beat the System" at this stage of the game.

As for safety...if I were phobic about safety I wouldn't be flying small aircraft and wouldn't have ridden motorcycles most of my life. Even a small car, with today's safety engineering, is far safer than most automobiles of just a few years ago.

This is a simple equation for me, based solely on dollars and cents: Drive everywhere we want to go for 1/3 the cost in gas. That's it in a nutshell. No rationalizing as to why it's not a good idea, no emotional factors, JUST an economic decision.

I have a great deal of respect for Rush Limbaugh's political insight but the one area he has consistantly played the role of Supreme Moron is his disdain of any mention of resource conservation. Common sense dictates we treat the subject with a balanced approach. The hardliners on both sides have done inestimable damage to this country.

Dan,

I agree that we probably should all be more conservation minded, but I'll remind you of this. Higher fuel prices everywhere else in the world drove consumers to buy more fuel efficient vehicles... gas-guzzlers of any kind are rare overseas! That did NOT drive down fuel prices overseas, and that alone won't do it here!

Sorry, but I have NO respect for any of Rush Limbaugh's rantings, political or otherwise! He's merely an entertainer who's "insight" changes with the ebb and flow of his ratings, like every other entertainer.

My autos are an Acura Integra, a Honda Civic, and a Toyota Camry. While they're not the ultimate gas-miser, they do get good gas mileage. What I don't care for are the suburbanites who went to "Save the Planet" rallies then, when the events were over, climbed into their humongous SUV's, drove home thinking they did their duties.

I gotta chime in here ....

First, I operate four trucks that cover six counties. Picking and choosing which days my trucks will get filled up is simply not an option. Without a major reduction in the commercial uses of motor fuels, any boycott would be completely pointless.

Second, the primary drivers of price are supply and demand. This is basic economics, folks, and it is NOT theory. That is what this boycott idea is based on. But just shifting the demand from one day to another is not going to impact price. Either demand needs to fall or supply needs to rise over an extended period of time.

You can preach conservation until you are blue in the face. If we have a healthy economy, energy demand is going to rise, period, end of story! The only way to significantly decrease energy demand is to trash the economy.

So! That leaves only one option for reducing price, and that is to increase energy supplies. There are two ways this can be done. The easiest and least expensive is to increase production capability for the energy products we currently use. Even though this COULD be done, WE HAVE NOT BEEN DOING IT!! We have not developed our domestic oil supplies, we have not aggressively protected our foreign sources, and we have not built a new refinery in this country in 35 years. This is IDIOCY! As with so many other issues, a great many problems could be solved with a drastic reduction in political correctness.

The second strategy that could be used to increase supply is to develop alternatives to current technologies. There has been a LOT of money and research thrown at this approach. To date, no economically viable alternative has been found, or developed. At this time, none of the possible alternatives are financially competitive with hydro-carbon based fuels and the internal combustion engine. Until one of them becomes competitive, either from the cost of hydro-carbon fuels increasing, or the cost of the alternative decreasing, the hydro-carbon fuels will be our primary energy source.

The fastest, and least expensive means of moderating energy costs is to ensure our supply of crude and increase refining capabilities. There are considerable crude reserves available domestically so that we could increase crude supply without shooting Hugo Chavez and Ahmadinejad in the head, and we certainly have the resources and expertise to build new refineries.

What needs to happen is that those with half an ounce of common sense need to become noisier than the politically correct crowd. Unfortunately, most of those with that common sense are busy leading their lives and don't have the time to be activists, and the politically correct crowd live for activism.

There is the nub of the problem. I don't have a magical answer because I don't think most of us are going to take time off from our lives to start making a lot of noise until our lifestyles are seriously threatened. We are a long way from that point yet. Much as everyone whines about fuel costs, we still buy the gas and live our comfortable lives pretty much as we have, unwilling to take the risks to our livestyles necessary to be noisy enough to effect change.

Reg

I got the same e-mail from a friend - so I'm forwarding my response to all of you:

"Tony -

You do realize that this will only hurt the retailers who already own the gas and have it sitting in the tanks at the station. The Oil companies have millions of gallons of gas stockpiled - they sell to brokers, who sell to distributors, who then sell to retailers. You would have to NOT BUY (IE NOT DRIVE) for months before the oil companies felt anything - then they in turn would respond to the reduction in demand by not producing as much (which by the way is actually cheaper for them so the cost per gallon goes down and they make more $) and we end up paying even more because of the lack of supply. 8th grade economics.

This tactic is short sited and uninformed. The actual effect is that if nobody bought gas for one day - they would still drive, and there would be a sales surge on the 14th. and 16th, and probably many stations out of gas on the 16th because of it - this only creates a loss of revenue to the retailer because they have no product to sell. The oil companies wouldn't notice the impact at all on the bottom line at the end of the week much less the month or year. The almost 2.3 billion loss - is inaccurate - even if nobody bought bought gas for a day - and didn't drive or burn any so they never replaced it the loss to the oil companies would be less than 5% of that 2.3 billion which is negligible to such a large industry.

Want to reduce our dependance on oil - get rid of your SUV and truck, and buy a fuel efficient car or even just car pool. If everyone carpooled with just one other person there would be 1/2 the commuter traffic. Not only would we burn 1/2 the gas, with half the traffic it would be a more efficient drive and we'd save there. Think of the savings in environmental factors with only half the cars on the road each day....

Bottom line - It's a consumer driven market. and as long as we're buying - they're selling for a profit. And who can blame them - that's what companies do, MAKE MONEY.

While I'm off the deep end here; to ask an oil company to invest in alternative fuels is ridiculous... Think about it - hypothetically lets say you have been a shoe maker for years and have made a profitable business out of it. Shoes are something everyone needs and they've been around for centuries. One day the government comes along and says - you make too much money - you need to invest it in finding an alternative to shoes. What are you going to tell uncle sam? I doubt you'd say, "Oh sure - we make money selling shoes but we'll certainly find an alternative for everyone to switch to."

Dave"

My 2cents

That's why one of the smartest things any "threatened" company can do is invest heavily in the competition, which is exactly what several major oil companies are doing right now!

Alternative fuels, especially ethanol!