Gas boycott?

[azurelunatic]

There's an e-mail going around about organizing a boycott of Exxon and Mobil for the rest of the year, based on the current gasoline prices versus the actual cost of producing gasoline and the assumed abundance of same, with the rationale for choosing those companies that they're the biggest.

I'm not reproducing the actual text of the e-mail here, because it's lengthy and I'm not sure that I entirely agree with it. I dislike the amount of control the oil companies have over the US. However, I'm not sure that organizing a boycott of gas companies based on market share is an answer that will do the society long-term good. Perhaps organizing a boycott of gas companies based on their willingess (or rather, lack thereof) to look to alternate fuels and their support of research in energy conservation and efficiency?

On a personal level, there are things that consumers can do to reduce their overall use of gasoline. Planning routine tasks for efficiency -- not taking separate trips to accomplish each trip, using alternate modes of transportation when possible (walk, bus, carpool), doing things in off-peak hours to avoid the nastiness of rush hour -- probably more.

I am very much encouraged by the article I saw some months ago about a method of breaking down garbage into its component parts, and extracting all number of useful substances from same. A good portion of the substances produced were oils, gasoline, and fertilizer. If we can't make the transition from a gasoline economy so quickly, perhaps we can at least move away from a fossil gasoline economy.

Comments

[juuro.livejournal.com]

My father's big family sedan uses about 5.6 litres per 100 kilometers, which translates as 42 miles per gallon.

The price of the fuel over here is extortionate compared to yours, something like EUR 1.10 per litre, which translates as about USD 4.15 per gallon.

I wonder if there is a connection between excessive consumption and moderate price.

[azurelunatic]

How many minutes of driving time does the average worker do to get to and from work every day? Here, I think an hour of driving per day is on the low side.

[juuro.livejournal.com]

There's a clear difference, then. One that, in my opinion, should be even greater a motivation for the American to get more miles out of their gallon. Burning away your day's earnings on the drive between home and work is an excercise in futility. Except that the ridiculously low cost of fuel doesn't make it apparent.

Most of the people I've worked with feel that over half an hour of commute is excessive, but in the big cities it is a bit different, an hour is more a median. But definitely not on the low side.

We will have to make a transition away from fossil fuels. It is inevitable, and it is going to be painful. None of the alternative methods, garbage cracking and biomass included, will yield the as low dollars-per-gallon as current petrocarbons do.

[azurelunatic]

I am lucky in that my transit time is half an hour or less round trip, and that is walking. If I were driving, it would be a very few minutes, depending on traffic, only why should I drive? That makes traffic worse, there is very little parking, it wastes money, it pollutes atmosphere, and it robs me of my precious physical exertion time.

My roommate's job is 20 miles away, and her one-way commute there is 45 minutes to 1 and a half hours. To get there on time at nine, she leaves here at seven. She goes off shift at 6, and arrives home at 7 or later. Using mass transit to get to the same area, travel time is more along the lines of 2 hours or more.