Gas out day

[NES_player4LIFE]

On April 15th there is going to be a protest against high pump prices.

How to join?
Easy.
Refuse to buy gasoline on the 15th.

Lets send a message to big oil.

[NES_player4LIFE]

Maybe, but if Millions of consumers refuse to buy a product even for a day the company's may see a swift kick in the pants coming.

[winter_mute]

Maybe, but if Millions of consumers refuse to buy a product even for a day the company's may see a swift kick in the pants coming.

Maybe, but oil reserves are almost dry, so seems to me that any protest wont change current situation. Prices will continue to grow - oil companies, refineries, processing companies, will dry every penny from ours wallets... while they still can.

[smcd]

Not to mention that (the US) were net export for gasoline etc. the past year.. Decreasing demand here and increasing demand elsewhere (China, India, etc) means that capitalism has them shipping it off to where they get paid more. Gas is going to go up again here as refineries adjust out of winter blend, too.

Want better results? Get ethanol out of the gas. It reduces mileage in most vehicles, and costs a lot of time energy and thus money, to be added in in the first place. Down with the corn lobby and sugar cartels!

[ScottJC]

I tend to agree with stolen_textures reasoning here: unless millions stop buying for a protracted amount of time and don't massively stock up the day before a protest is entirely pointless.

[winter_mute]

Want better results? Get ethanol out of the gas. It reduces mileage in most vehicles, and costs a lot of time energy and thus money, to be added in in the first place. Down with the corn lobby and sugar cartels!

I would not be so quick with hasty conclusions.
On streets, I see more and more vehicles running on biofuel... well, at least 50% them are renovated 15+yo cars from Mercedes and VW... but never mind that, important is that you can pour almost everything to good old non-turbo diesel without any damage to the engine, e.g. vegetable frying oil from a nearby grocery store :] The downside is smoke, and smell of French fries from a distance of half a mile, but hey, that's the way to boycott petrol industry actions, not to mention 1.5$/galon costs


... so, leave corn lobby alone, cause (who knows) in few years it can be more powerful than oil industry is today

[smcd]

I have no problem with biofuels, biodiesel in particular. My main gripe is the use of corn ethanol in the US. It's not a good precursor for ethanol, and the diluted gas still costs the same or more but with typically less mileage. Plus subsidies and diversion of corn to ethanol production cause prices to rise elsewhere that they might not have if it weren't being used for fuel, like food. if there was progress with importing or growing more sugarcane (about 2x as efficient as corn for ethanol, and less carbon too) I'd be more for ethanol use in gas blends too.

Then there's the aspects of blended gasoline like not being good for small engines, less energy dense than hydrocarbons, and it attracts and retains water. As technology improves and cars designed around ethanol blends are more common, im sure some of my gripes will be diminished.

[Malcolm]

First off gas buying boycotts don't work; consumers don't eat a large enough chunk of the pie to make a difference from a boycott - even if you boycott for years.

In terms of biofuels, while not a bad idea, we don't have the ability to properly obtain and distribute with our current infrastructure. It's less energy dense, so you're going to get less mileage per tank. When some try to make a cause against biofuel they argue that we have a food shortage, this really isn't the case. Right now we, as the human race, produce enough food to feed about 13 billion people. The problem with starvation isn't lack of food production but in transportation. So the main problem I see with biofuel is obtaining and refining - then the cost of retrofitting our current gear for the new fuel type.

For a short term fix (from now to 20 to 30 years from now) I'd suggest we move to natural gas. It's cheap, can be produced in most countries so there's no issue with consumption based wars, burns far cleaner then gasoline while being more energy dense (more miles per tank). A TED talk going over natural gas -> http://goo.gl/3JzHf

We're making many breakthroughs in battery and solar/nuclear technologies ( http://goo.gl/W7eDP, http://goo.gl/OgSA0 ). I think the time that natural gas would give us we'd be able to make very light weight, quick charging batteries and have refined LFTR and solar technologies to a point where we'd have safe, green reliable energy. Not to mention installing graphene in everything to make things more efficient -> http://goo.gl/vlOyU

[[SS] Starscream]

I guess that will also be the "everyone got fired from work because they didn't buy gas and couldn't get to their job day" day.

[Martin]

What's the gas price where you guys live btw? It's around 9 dollars per gallon here (about 2.50 per litre)