Having a Snarky Day

 

A friend forwarded me one of those "don't buy oil from companies who buy foreign oil" e-mails that I am to forward to just ten friends who tell ten friends…(anyone remember Alpha Beta?), and I just had to respond. It takes me awhile to ruminate on some issues, but I finally came up with an opinion, so thought I'd share it with my "world." The name has been changed to protect my friend.

OK, Chris--I know you know waaayy more about fuel and oil than I do, but this plan will not work.  I'll just refer you to Snopes, which has published several articles on this general subject that beg question the logic of this article. 

Gas is going to go up and up and up---we are now paying for 1 gallon of gas what we pay for 1 gallon of milk and one loaf of (the better brands) bread.  Oil just passed the $100/barrel mark--I think this week it hit $109/barrel.

People want to find ways that are not so "inconvenient" to reduce dependence on Saudi/Arab/OPEC oil.  It sounds nice and clean cut easy to just boycott several gas companies--Exxon/Mobil & Chevron, e.g., and buy from ARCO.  But we know that by the time gas gets to the pump, it's so mixed with Arab, Canadian, Venezuelan oil there is no knowing exactly where the gas came from that just went into our fuel tank.

The only way we will truly become independent from foreign oil is to change our cushy life styles and walk more, bike more, drive less, buy local produce and local supplies like in the old days, use products that don't use oil in the process of their manufacture.  Who wants to do that? Try to find products that don't use some form of oil in their manufacturing processes, for one thing.

I do want to live like this to a degree, but I still drive, and still like French milled soaps, and love to fly to foreign or just far away destinations.

So, we super-consuming Americans will most likely continue to behave exactly as we always have, using all the oil we can, and other non-renewable resources until this earth becomes a balloon filled with nothing but air and pops.  Let's just hope we don't know anyone alive then. That way we won't have to feel so guilty about who dies.

 

I'm off the soap box now.