Our response to the high gasoline prices should be NO summer vacations

[hector459]

Especially in our cars. But I know, Americans will never SACRIFICE to counter the capitlistic crooks but I can dream. We didn't do it at Christmas either. The corporate sleaze knows just what the market will bear...and that is almost anything so long as you don't ask a single one of us to give up something.

[Maple]

1. How would that help?

If there is less and less oil...boycotts won't make a toss of difference.

[Javaman]

2. Summer vacations???? what the hell are those???

I haven't gotten a raise in 4 years, I have forgotten what a vacation is.

[SouthernDem2004]

3. I do not see how damaging our economy would be a positive thing.

[ClarkUSA]

9. How is that damaging the economy?

Perhaps the money and time would be better spent more environmentally and less to the benefit of Big Oil. My family won't be driving around this summer.

[marmar]

4. I'm taking one....

to Europe, where the political climate is more appetizing.

[ClarkUSA]

10. Tempting....very tempting.

Paris beckons.

[RoyGBiv]

5. Yeah, okay ...

I'll sacrifice. Or more correctly stated, I'll tell my soon-to-be 16 year old daughter, who only turns 16 once in her life, that the cross-country trip she's been expecting since she was 12, during which I teach her to drive, will have to be canceled because the price of gas, while still not reaching European standards of expensive, is just too high and is allowing people we don't like to make too much money. Hundreds of thousands (optimistically) join me boycott, and we all sit home with disgruntled families.

Meanwhile, gas prices lower marginally, and the people who simply don't give a crap and those who make those profits and will twist the causation of this lowering to show how they care will all take their own vacations, make their families happy, and provide a stark contrast showing that liberals/Democrats are inherently no fun while wealthy Pukes never stop to notice anything happened.

I have sacrificed until my feet, literally, bleed. I'm actually healthier for it. I fill up once a month now because I walk or ride my bike everywhere except to work, to see my daughter, or to do things with my mother, the latter two living too far away to make a bike ride practical ... not to mention the problems with transporting a nearly invalid mother on a bike. I've had a trip planned with my daughter this summer for four full years. I simply do not care how expensive gasoline gets. It's all going to be gone eventually anyway. Boycotts only delay the inevitable. (I personally welcome $5.00/gal gas prices. Maybe, just maybe, then someone will get serious about alternative forms of energy.) I'm taking that trip and not leaving my daughter with the memory her father cares more about making a nearly empty political statement than his own daughter while I still can.

And before anyone starts on me about setting a good example she'll appreciate later, I do plenty of that. My daughter is more radical than I am, in fact. But she wants to see New York, and she wants me to take her. I am by god going to do so.

[ToesOfDeath]

6. Well said

The sooner the oil is gone, the sooner the Chimp - er, monkey is off our back

[RoyGBiv]

8. Pretty much ...

Both the best and worst part of the common culture in which we live is that we respond to a crisis when and only when that crisis cannot be denied even in the most imaginitive of minds. We've done fairly well when faced with such dire circumstances, but leading up to them, we're idiots.

So I'm embracing the idiocy and trying to develop a few good memories I can use to sustain myself through it. Let chaos reign until we're damn well forced to do something proactive.

And ...

Welcome to DU!!!!

:hi:

[ClarkUSA]

11. Great first post -- welcome to DU

:toast:

[newyawker99]

12. Hi ToesOfDeath!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[MNDEM2004]

18. Welcome to the DU.

[hector459]

14. And this is what the oil companies and corporations know.

I rest my case.

Happy Summer folks! Come back and tell us how the trip and driving lessons went.

[RoyGBiv]

16. Strange case ...

All you've done is suggest what we should do, but you've given no reason for it other than gas prices are high. Further, I don't detect any suggestions regarding what this would accomplish. Would it lower the price if, say, millions of people jumped on board? That's possible, but does this lower price actually help anything?

The fundamental problem with any "don't buy gas" initiative is that it utterly fails to address the underlying problem, as several in this thread mentioned in one way or another. The truth is simply that we have a finite amount of usable oil. Not buying gasoline during a limited period of time is not a solution to that problem; it is merely a delaying tactic, and a very minor one at that.

I am absolutely not helping anything by taking my summer vacation, in my car, this year. The other 51 weeks out of the year I do more than a significant proportion of the people in the industrialized world to limit my personal dependency on fossil fuels and their derivatives. But here's the problem. The way this country's entire structure is formed currently, I cannot do anything but sit in the woods, unclothed -- or wearing garments I've made myself out of vegetation or killing animals with my self-built bow and arrow made from wood and vines -- and doing little else but surviving. Neither can you.

So, while I'm taking my summer vacation, take an inventory of how many things you purchased that were transported by trucks, trains, or airplanes, count the number of these items that are encased in or made of plastic, figure out how much energy you use by running an A/C unit or fan, and of course consider how much oil has been used in creating and maintaining the infrastructure we call the Internet.

The *price* of gas is not, and never has been, the problem, except maybe that's it has been far too cheap and thus encouraged the mass production of inefficient methods of utilizing the energy it produces.

[hector459]

19. It's not the "price of gas" it's the PROFITS of gas that's the problem

And while you are correct that many, many things cause the consumption of petro, right now the only thing I'm focusing on is gasoline since that is the things that so many working people rely on to get to work, day care etc. When you add up what it costs out of pocket, it gasoline,not air conditioning that takes money right out of hands of working Americans. Some things are just a matter of principle. And we can always rationalize away any sacrifice.

[RoyGBiv]

21. I understand what you're saying ...

But consider that if what you say is true, that profits are the problem, increasing gasoline supply by not consuming it will have the opposite impact you desire unless you somehow come up with a plan that increases supplies to glut status. And if that happens, refineries simply shut down, wells are capped, and OPEC decreases production, putting people out of work, which of course at minimum stabilizes or more likely increases the price. Even then, in the long term, a low price reduces the urgency and financial incentive for those seeking alternative forms of fuel, which benefits the oil companies.

Regardless, I just don't agree that the response you're suggesting will have any measureable impact, not unless it is such a broad movement that it extends well beyond the summer vacation period and ecompasses a hefty percentage of the population. That's simply not happening until the price of gasoline is so high that it goes beyond the point of people not wanting to pay the price to people being incapable of paying it, and I mean truly incapable, as in having to choose between that and something like food after they've shed themselves of every other form of discretionary spending.

And, yes, I know some people are doing that now. But I also know, again, that the price of gasoline is something that will continue to increase overall as time progresses and as the supply of oil continues to dwindle. That is what needs to be addressed.

[Fescue4u]

7. Well....that won't be that difficult

I have no doubt that a number of summer vacations will be canceled due to fuel cost concerns (or they will be close to home)

[Cash]

13. No Can Do

I'm not giving up the one time I get to get out of town with my family to have fun and to see new things. Life's too short.

[MNDEM2004]

17. I agree with you.

People look forward to vacations. Not going on one just because gas prices are high will only disappoint family members.

Welcome to the DU:hi:

[Az]

15. Our response should be: Why the heck are we still using gas?!?!?

Good grief. No matter how much gas they have squirreled away in Alaska its still a limited resource. Start developing the alternates now people. NOW!

[Renew Deal]

20. I don't think that's such a good idea.

There has to be a better way. It would be horrible messaging to tell people they can't have a break after working all year.