Gas Boycotting (Or "An Easy Way to Change the World")

So I was going through my Facebook newsfeed, (because let's face it, college kids have nothing better to do and creeping on my "friends" is more interesting than my paper that is due tomorrow) and I saw an event for "Don't Buy Gas on March 31!" or something like that. Ok cool.

Then I saw it again, except for March 14th. I figured they just changed the date or something until I saw one for March 10 and I realized there are several different events of essentially the same exact thing for the same purpose, just on different days in March.

After a quick scan of my newsfeed, here are all the different (but same!) ones that I found:

Don't pump gas on March 14 2011 "GAS OUT"
No Gas Day on March 31
Gas Strike on March 10

All of these events had at least a hundred thousand people marked as "attending" and a quick facebook search of "gas boycott" brought up several more results including one set for St. Patrick's Day, one during March Madness, and a lot still protesting the BP oil spill last April. A Google search of "gas boycott 2011" the same thing also brought up results for a April 15 gas boycott. The idea is that by not buying gas for one day, it will influence the oil companies to lower gas prices.

While these people have the right idea, it's not going to change the world. Why not?

First, if there's anything I've learned from being on student government at a Division 1 university, if you're going to plan the exact same event as someone else, coordinate efforts. Trust me, it'll work better that way.

Second? "Sure, I'll boycott gas on March 14th. I'll just make sure to fill up on the 13th." See the problem here? It's not going to change the amount of gas bought. Just because people refuse to buy gas on one day doesn't mean that they aren't ever going to buy gas again.

I finally found one group that seems to have it right. It's called Gas Boycott-MORE THAN ONE DAY. You don't like the price of gas? It's getting too expensive to fill up your car (or Expedition)? Don't buy it. Not just for one day, don't buy it EVER. Invest in a bicycle. Or a bus pas. UNL students get them for free (the bus pass, not the bike).

I'm serious. Granted, Nebraska winters don't have the best biking conditions, but I can definitely get by in the summer without driving, at least not very much. And I take the bus everyday to class and carpool to my practicum off-campus. I buy gas maybe once a month, if that, and in the summer when I can ride my bike, it's a lot less.

According to an About.com article, a gas boycott probably won't lower gas prices much anyway, since gasoline only accounts for 20% of each barrel of crude oil. Unless you can reduce the demand for OIL that much, gas prices aren't going to go down. Oil is 55% of the price of gas, so even if the oil companies are hit hard (which they won't be after only 1 day of boycotting), it's not likely that gas will suddenly be less than $2 a gallon (and remember when we thought that was expensive?)

Even BP, the oil giant that saw mass boycotts last spring after the oil spill, wasn't affected much. The gas boycotts mainly hurt the people who owned and operated the local station, said an article in the Boston Globe published in June. The boycotts hardly made a dent in BP's overall earnings.

The same Boston Globe article said that Greenpeace wasn't endorsing the boycotts. The best way to make a difference was to actually move "beyond petroleum."

So as the Beatles put it,

You say you want a revolution
Well you know
We'd all want to change the world

There's a lot of talk and we all want to make a difference, so what are we going to do about it?