No Gas Day Won’t Work. This Will.
I don’t remember how I first received the No Gas Day e-mail in 2004. According to Snopes.com, this call to action has been circulating in some form since 1999. This year, it’s more popular than ever. The problem with No Gas Day is that, good as it sounds, it won’t actually hurt the oil companies or drive down prices.
I understand the frustration people feel about high gas prices, and why an idea like No Gas Day is popular. Even when you adjust for inflation, gas prices are nearing an all-time high. Unfortunately, the concept behind No Gas Day is inherently flawed. Staging a one-day “gas out” just means that people will buy more gas the day before or after the protest. Since the supply and demand of the product (gasoline) isn’t actually affected, the price won’t change. No Gas Day might send a message, but it won’t make the dent in oil company profits that people believe it will. The only way to truly fix the problem is to make gasoline obsolete.
The sad fact is that our country’s economy is completely dependent on oil derivatives like gasoline and diesel. Without the oil industry’s products transportation in America would grind to a halt, crippling our economy. In a way, they have the ultimate product — we can’t not buy it. The oil companies know this, and price accordingly. They also know that the supply of their product is finite. I don’t doubt that the current high prices are part of a strategy to weather the shortages that are inevitably coming.
A single day of abstention won’t solve our problems with high gas prices, foreign oil dependency, or global warming. No single solution will. Electric cars, hydrogen fuel cells, and ethanol will not save us. Oil has given us a long and happy spell of relatively cheap, plentiful energy. That’s going away, and it won’t be easy to replace. There is no magic bullet.
What we need is magic buckshot: a variety of simultaneously-deployed solutions that work together to meet our country’s ravenous energy appetite. We need a dedicated, multi-faceted research and development effort to make this happen. We need investment from both the public and private sector. And we need it now.
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No Gas day is being panned as an urban legend; I have no concrete proof that it will work however, you don’t need to be the sharpest pencil in the box to realize that gas stations sell much more than just gas. They sell coffee and donuts and milk and bread and 500 other household items. Now it is true that if you don’t buy your gas on the 15th, that you will likely purchase more on the 16th, however if you need coffee on the way to work or a donut or a gallon of milk on the way home your local mini-mart will not be getting the sale and that does add up to millions of dollars everyday. That is why these companies got into the business in the first place; we pay for convienance. However if we are not stopping for gas, we are not going to pay a premium at BP to buy Tide or lunch meat. The solution to this problem is consistancy; if every American does this once a year I question how effective it will be; but if this could be staged on a monthly basis then oil companies will notice a tangible loss of profits and forseeable problems in the future. (please publish)
Comment by Rod Czlonka — May 16, 2007 @ 6:31 am
I don’t know much about the convenience store business model, so it’s hard to respond to the crux of your comment. I suspect (though I don’t know for sure) that the bulk of the “convenience surcharge” goes into the pocket of the convenience store owner rather than the oil company. If that’s true, then a boycott of convenience stores would only hurt local business owners.
Whether I’m right or not may depend on which chain of stores you’re looking at — business models may vary from one to another. I’d be interested in hearing the thoughts of someone who knows more about the business than I do. I still think the only long-term solution here is a replacement for oil products.
Comment by Adam Messinger — May 16, 2007 @ 1:41 pm
The majority of scientists, governments and industry leaders have selected hydrogen as the clean/green replacement for oil. Certain special interest groups are fighting it:
1. Oil companies are torn in that they are running out of oil but H2 can be made by anybody from water or any organic material so someday they know they will lose control of it.
2. Certain uninformed enviro-activists hate it because they think it is “oil company scam” and don’t realize anybody can do it.
3. Steel industry hates it because H2 cars don’t use steel.
4. Battery companies hate it because it obsoletes batteries. This group actually spends tens of millions annually to create H@ disinformation campaigns. Most of the bloggers and writers opposing it have turned out to be battery company shills.
5. Misinformed public and a few politicians oppose because they are working from data years old when the H2 improvements are occurring monthly and the years-old data is irrelevant.
No other alternative energy solution can possibly, in any known calculation or breakthrough, solve the world demand at the needed price point, in the needed volume in the needed timeframe. If H2 is not deployed by the time oil reaches “overcost run-out”, sometime between today and 2030, the economic failures will cause a global war for resources and it is unlikely many will make it through.
Comment by Bob Lewis — May 26, 2007 @ 1:33 pm
Those are some pretty big claims, Bob. How about a few links to back them up? I’d like to know:
1. How are you going to power the electrolytic processes that allow “anybody” to extract hydrogen “from water or any natural material”? Half of the electricity in America is produced by burning coal — hardly clean energy. We’ll need a lot of power to produce enough hydrogen to replace gasoline. Do you have a portable cold fusion generator in your hip pocket, perhaps?
2. What has been done to address the problem of hydrogen’s volatility? Chrysler made a concept car in 2001 that used an inert crystalline hydrogen carrier, but I haven’t heard anything new in this department for years.
3. Steel industry opposition is unlikely to be any stronger for hydrogen cars than it would be for electric cars. Electric and hybrid cars already make use of composites to keep weight down. Pressure from the steel industry against alternative-fuel vehicles wouldn’t surprise me, but it’s unlikely to be unique to hydrogen-powered cars.
4. What about the non-existent hydrogen infrastructure? There’s no nationwide transportation system for hydrogen fuel and very few hydrogen refueling stations. The electricity transmission infrastructure is pre-existing and highly efficient, and ethanol has the advantage of being able to share some of the the gasoline infrastructure.
5. Hydrogen may be the most abundant substance in the universe, but its elemental form is pretty rare here on Earth. Once you expend the energy to extract it from things that aren’t rare, then expend the energy to transport it to the consumer, will the energy you get out of the fuel make up for it?
All of these problems could be solved with time and research, of course. Take point number 5, for example: If we had to rely on harvesting electricity from lightning strikes, I probably wouldn’t be typing this on a computer right now. Some of these problems may have already been solved, which is why I’m asking you for supporting links.
Some of the problems I’ve mentioned are also shared by other alternative fuel sources. If we replaced every car in the U.S. (or the world) with electric vehicles, we’d have to get all that extra electricity from somewhere. Would we just end up burning more coal?
As I said in the original post, there aren’t any easy answers here. And I’m still convinced that there’s no single “magic bullet” solution.
Comment by Adam Messinger — May 28, 2007 @ 3:17 pm
The single day abstention plan is completely ineffective, primarily for the reason you mentined, the smae gas will simply be bought a different day. There is an alternative that makes a lot more sense. I’m sure if you do a bit of searching you can find a more complete description of it, but basically it is “Dont buy from the biggest companies” on the logic that if they are hurting, they will lower their prices, forcing everyone to lower their prices.
A second dimension of this concept is to reduce personal consumption. We can each have a tiny effect on Demand, and that will influence Price.
Comment by James — September 21, 2007 @ 6:51 pm
Only way to cut your gas prices is start car pools with people at work..GO shopping with neighbors or friends.take the train or mass transit if possible.Buy a motorcycle..do whatever you have to not to use your car at least 3 to 4 days a week
Comment by carol — May 7, 2008 @ 1:21 pm