Gas Boycott is a lot of hot air.

Jaspenelle
by Jaspenelle
Tue
15
May
2007
8:17am
Posted in sub-blogs:
Tagged as
3 Comments

In response to all the emails and myspace notes I have received stating that I should not buy gas today…

Michael drives a small car, he won’t be filling up today, not because of the boycott, but because he filled up this weekend and won’t need to for several days.

I will not be buying gas either, I am boycotting gas and have been doing so for awhile. I ride my bike to work every day. I don’t have a car or drivers license, I live and work in the city, I don’t need one. That is a true boycott, not this skipping the filling station for a day nonsense.

Starting with the claim that this has worked before, in April 1997, it hasn’t. Government stats can easily disprove that and I trust them over a chain letter or MySpace page. I would love someone to show me one shred of credible proof that it happened. IF it really happened wouldn’t there be some before and after photos around? Some big news stories?

The problem with this whole idea is that none of these letters are asking people to drive less, some of the emails even suggest topping off the tank on May 14th and waiting to May 16th to fill up again. Therefor people will drive just as much – we are not cutting consumption – we are not cutting anything. A boycott involves giving up something, by shifting the date of purchase to tomorrow, you are not giving up anything, therefor it is not helping. All it accomplishes is giving people false hope and making them believe by doing nothing, they can invite change.

We need to incite change, not wait for it.

Now if any of these emails had said, don’t buy gas and don’t drive you car. Yes it might have made a difference but they did not. Gas prices are only going to be effected by a long term national effort to reduce our fuel consumption. We need to in fuel efficient cars as well as find alternate means of transportation. Car pool, bus, subway, bike etc. There is someone in our apartment complex who drives to church every week, (no handicap sticker), her church is less then 300 feet from our building, it is literally next door. People like this are the people we have to change.

If we truly want meaningful long term change we should invest in long term solutions not things like this gimmicky “gas out”.

~~~

In other news:

OMG The Golden Compass has been turned into and movie and is coming out in December. *Le squee!*

3 Comments

  1. Eknock
    Posted Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at 8:55 am | Permalink

    It’s true, if your filling up before or after said date then nothing is really changing.

    My Dad said last year, that boycott a particular station for a week and then just rotate through them, or something so that one station would be getting no business might help. but even that I’m not sure about. My dad has to drive back and forth from work though, there’s no walking about it. I do however walk back and forth from work every day and only get a taxi when the weather doesn’t permit walking or I’m doing Groceries.

  2. Aunt Ruth
    Posted Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at 1:59 pm | Permalink

    Bravo! You bring up excellent points on what long term change really means…a change of attitude.

  3. the_becka
    Posted Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at 6:23 pm | Permalink

    Over here I’ve also heard similar gas boycott nonsense, nonsense like, “Don’t go to [some gas station] on that day! It will teach them a leason blah blah blah…”. Yeah right…

    If we truly want meaningful long term change we should invest in long term solutions not things like this gimmicky “gas out”.

    Exactly, the “boycott” I just mentioned fizzled out quickly.