$4 gas - Time for a Boycott?

Adjusted for inflation, gas prices are reasonable today, not especially high.

A one-day gas boycott won't even reach Big Oil, they won't notice it at all.  A one-day boycott will affect gas stations.  Gas stations don't buy gas every day, they'll have one day of slow sales and a little extra before and after.  Probably won't have any impact on their orders for gas from wholesalers, stations don't fill their tanks every day.  By the time you work your way up the distribution channels to the refiners, they won't even notice a one-day boycott, even if it's 100% effective.

Want to hurt Big Oil?  Stage a mini-boycott every day of your life -- *think* before you drive.  Choose an efficient car, keep it well maintained, and don't drive more than you need to.  Let's say you drive 12,000 miles a year, that's about average, and let's say you get 20 miles/gallon.  That's 600 gallons a year.  Now let's say a one-day boycott really did cut your annual consumption by 10 gallons.  (Realistically, you'd just buy your gas the day before, or the day after.  But let's just pretend the boycott really worked.)  That's 1.7% of your gas for the year.  You'll hurt Big Oil more by changing your air filter and checking your tire pressure. 

Instead of a one-day boycott, let's say you trade in your car on a more efficient model that gets 24 mpg instead of 20.  Not a huge improvement, I'm not saying you have to run out and get a Prius.  24mpg vs. 20mpg.  That's 100 gallons a year.

Meanwhile, if you're in the U.S., let's look at gas taxes.  Are your roads and highways well-maintained?  Do you get where you're going as fast as you should?  Want to know why not?  Because we're not paying for good roads, or new roads. 

Here in Washington State, we have some of the higher gas taxes in the country, 34 cents, for a total of 52 cents when you add federal taxes.  I drive for business, something over 20,000 miles a year.  Since I drive so much, I drive a reasonably efficient car, a Subaru wagon -- I get around 25mpg average.  So 20,000 miles / 25 mpg * 52 cents/gallon = $416 fuel taxes.  Does that really seem like enough to pay for my fair share of road maintenance, let alone improvements?  It doesn't to me. 

 If I could be sure it would be spent on high-value road improvements rather than eye-candy projects for downtown Seattle, I'd wholeheartedly support a doubling of the gas tax tomorrow.  Yes, it would cost me $416 a year, but how much time would it save me every year?

Those prices just mean you are catchingn up with the rest of the world where prices have been at thos levels for years.

To really make a difference, buy a smaller car for a start. 

 Higher Taxes going to research  for alternative energy research? If my memory serves me right  my  taxes go every where than where they should go. My taxes last time I checked went to   billion dollar subsidies for exxon's exploration of new target  oil  fields,meanwhile they are reaping record profits at my exspense.Big oil has fleets of lawyers to  beat taxes in every concievable way while I foot the bill. My taxes go to fighting a war in Iraq for global domination of resources in the middle east. I have a one in 147 chance of being audited this year by  the IRS. When was the last time you heard of ,Shell ,Exxon,  or  Texaco being audited by the IRS. When KBR or Halliburton is audited by an intergovernmental agency they get a slap on the hand and a fine.,and they're on their merry way.

 Meanwhile the energy/auto/ oil conglomerate is spending untold  amounts on pr and advertising convincing me that I need  a huge gas guzzilin suv to be more of a man than my  neighbor. I think it is uncomprimisingly 'pollyanna' to think  that the 'corportocracy' is going to do anything that benefits anyone but themselves with our tax dollars.  Remember that GW is the president (installed by a Republican Supreme court)  of the "haves and have mores". Oil is running this country. If they can figure out a way to fuel   a mechanized vehicle with human waste they'll  develop a 'crapometer' that measures your waste and by governmental mandate have it installed on every household toilet  so they can tax you on it .  Were not too far away from having surveillance cameras on every  corner ( see Great Britain)  so remember...crap in your toilet... someone may be watching.

Case  in point..

    http://www.consumerfed.org/pdfs/Time_to_Change_the_Record_on_Oil_Policy080806.pdf

I live in Vancouver, Canada, where the news lately is on the possibility of regulating (capping?) gas prices. The argument is that gas/oil companies might be gouging, that statistics point to their highest profits ever. Profits. Them, making a profit, at our expense. The prices here are higher than in the rest of the country. That's one thing, the other thing is the aforementioned: realistic prices. As much as we complain about it, people drive anyway, and in a big city like this one, people get stuck in traffic an awful lot of the time. The provincial government's plan is to twin a major congestion "corner" (quite literally), a bridge. (It's to help commercial trucks get from the port to wherever.) Figures they'll think to the tip of their noses, because they won't be in parliament forever. The transportation minister, who works about 5 minutes from me and drives an SUV, did NOT consult transportation engineers. We would get by quite well with less cars if many other systems were properly in place: public transportation, mixed zoning in suburbs, and more people carpooling. (A third of our CO2 emissions here are from vehicles.) As much as we'd like to discourage people from driving, PERIOD, other systems need to be in place. Not helping the cause is the Dodge Ram SRT10, which is like a Viper in a truck's body. Are we really heading the right direction? The billions(?) of dollars that went into a defunct war on Iraq in the name of oil could have been spent on research and technology.

I also forgot to mention that according to a Norwegian friend of mine, the minimum wage there is $20/hr.