Gas is expensive. I think we all know this.
Everyone would love to have lower gas prices, but realistically does anyone out there actually think gas prices will drop (significantly) in our lifetime?
Back in 1994 when I was about 12 years old I remember spending a lot of my summer in a car. Traveling around Newfoundland for softball tournaments and across Atlantic Canada on vacation.
Gas was about 60 cents a litre at the time. I’m not sure of prices in the USA at the time, but I believe they were under $2 a gallon.
Anyway, once I started driving myself in 1999 I was purchasing gas for about 80 cents a litre. As I increased in age, gas increased in price to the point where it is now $1.25 a litre in Ontario and over $4 a gallon in parts of the United States.
My point is, gas has been going up in price my entire life. Does anyone out there seriously think it will return to the price it was even a decade ago?
So what have people been doing about it?
Of course! They’ve been setting up stupid and pointless groups on facebook as well as mass emails trying to get people to “not buy gas from May 15th-20th…” and so on and so forth.
These people are somehow under the idea that if we boycott a gas station or two, it will lead to a surplus of oil that will force the “boycotted” station to lower their prices in order to sell off their excess crude.
Seriously? Do you people honestly think this would even work? These groups will never get enough people to join this form of protest to even make a sizable dent in the pockets of the oil companies.
Sure maybe you don’t purchase oil for a few days in May, but we need oil . Eventually, people will break and purchase gasoline from wherever. These oil companies have enough oil stockpiled that they can take a few days of decreased sales and not even notice.
But what if it does work? What if everyone boycotted Esso or Shell for months on end. Let’s say in a dream land fantasy we the people finally crack the mighty Esso or Shell and force them to sell off their oil for a few cents cheaper.
Ok so maybe we get a few days of cheap gas, or maybe we even put Shell or Esso out of business.
Oh then we’re looking at one less oil company and thus less competition.
Eventually we end up with one of two things.
Either we get a few days of cheap gas every few months, or one by one we put companies out of business until there is a pure monopoly and gas is $9.00 a litre.
Then again, that’s assuming this “protest” would even work. But of course it won’t.
So stop making pointless facebook groups and inviting intelligent people to these groups.
I have a theory that the more facebook applications a person has (and therefore lower intelligence) the more likely they are to join these stupid groups.
Here are some “REAL” ideas to deal with the energy crisis.
1. Drive Less – Simple eh? Bike or walk to work if you can. If you can’t do that and driving is a must, just make sure you don’t go on pointless drives in the evening or on the weekend.
2. Drive Like Kurtis Billard On The Highway – There’s no real need to go over 90 KM/h or 60 MPH on the highway. I mean driving like an old man like me is safer and improves fuel economy.
3. Buy A More Fuel Efficient Vehicle – Sure we’d all like to have hybrids. But honestly they are still a bit costly and the technology is still sort of new, so hybrids can’t be for everyone yet. That said, when purchasing a new vehicle, check out their MPG and make an informed choice.
To sum it up. There’s not much we can do about this fuel crisis. Airlines, Gas Stations and anyone else selling oil are raising prices to offset their increased fuel costs. This is just a reality and it’s going to get worse, not better.
The best thing a person can do is to cut costs in other areas of their life, because oil prices won’t be going down ever again.
