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?

Coffee!

I think I have a problem. I think I've built up a tolerance to caffeine.

See, I absolutely love coffee. Not any of that fancy, frothy, flavored crap. I like it straight and black. No cream, no sugar, just coffee. Also, it has to be from a bean. I'm a bit spoiled from all my Hatian coffee I got this summer, and now I refuse to drink Folgers.

Mr. Reginald Coffee is one of my favorite things.

I really don't drink coffee all that much. I used to only have it every once in awhile, but this semester I've started drinking it just about every day because I have really early class. It helps me wake up in the mornings, or at least it used to. I still feel much more functional in the morning when I drink my coffee, but caffeine has lost its magical power to keep me awake.

Case in point, today I've had about 2 1/2 cups and I'm really fighting to not fall asleep.

I've tried really hard not to drink too much, usually about 1-2 cups a day, and only in the mornings. I don't drink pop, so my only caffeine exposure is from coffee. And according to a MedicineNet.com article on caffeine, a regular cup of coffee has about 135 mg of caffeine. So two cups of coffee puts you at about 270 mg, which is still in the "moderate" intake range and considered safe by the FDA and the AMA.

So is caffeine actually addictive? It depends on who you ask. The same MedicineNet article says that it's disputable since not everyone who consumes caffeine experiences withdrawal symptoms or dependence, but it's definitely possible. You've heard people say they get headaches if they haven't had their morning coffee.

I don't think I have an "addiction." At least if I do, it's not serious. I just really like coffee and happen to drink it fairly often. And maybe caffeine has lost its effect on me or maybe it's just been lessened as I've gotten used to it. I'm pretty positive I could go days without coffee and be just fine, just maybe a bit more groggy in the mornings.

Poli Sci.

I'm a pretty liberal person. For the most part, I agree with Obama and what he's doing, and I'm a registered Democrat.

My high school had a lot of like-minded people, or least the like-minded people were more vocal than the un-like-minded people, so I always forget that most people in Nebraska are conservative. I mean, I know a lot of older people are, but it always surprises me when I find out people my age are.

But, I realized that I really am a part of the minority in my poli sci recitation. There's always a lot of good discussion and such, but god, that class makes me crazy.

Actually, I love that class. Just some of the people make me crazy.

People were actually arguing that global warming is not real, and that climate change is not a big deal.

Read a freaking science book people. How does it make sense that emitting thousands of tons of crap into the atmosphere would not have some degree of a negative effect on the Earth??

And yes, we might have had cooler than usual temperatures in the past few years, but you have to look at the big picture. Temperature cycles fluctuate from year to year, but if you look at the average yearly temperatures over the past few hundred thousand years, you will see that the Earth's average temperature has been steadily zig-zagging upward, and is much higher that it used to be.

And if the Earth is not warming, how do you explain the melting ice caps? The rising ocean levels? The reduced precipitation, especially snow? (Which, incidentally, results in reduced snowpack runoff, which is what fills most rivers and supplies A LOT of the Earth's water. Less snow in the mountains=water shortages. A problem? I think so.)

They were saying that instead of spending money on reducing carbon emissions and pollution, we should be focusing on the economy. These are the same people who said we should be spending more money on defense, but that we shouldn't be doing anything to help out war-stricken, starving, under-resourced countries in Africa and Asia. Developing corporations is apparently more important.

Oh, and also according to them, health care reform will make it so that the government decides who gets health care and it will just be terrible for everyone because it will reduce the quality of medical care. This is apparently because Europe is socialist and it has a terrible economy and terrible health care.

The health care reform is focusing on health insurance. It would offer government-sponsored insurance at affordable rates to people who can't currently afford health care. How is this terrible? It's making health care available to more people, not less. It's not going to reduce the quality of health care because our medical system will be exactly the same, just more widely available. The government is not becoming socialist or subsidizing hospitals or anything like that. Health INSURANCE reform. Not health "let's-overhaul-everything-and-make-everything-terrible" reform. Not quite the crisis situation.

And Europe? Germany is one of the leading exporters in the world and has one of the strongest economies. I can't think of a single country in Europe that is as far in debt as the U.S. and the Euro is one of the strongest currencies. Doesn't seem like a terrible economy to me.

And their healthcare? How often do you hear about European countries having problems with their healthcare? That's what I thought...

I really do not understand people sometimes.

That's my rant.