I know I have said it before – stop wasting shit… right?

Well it applies to this Gasout/fuel boycott bullshit as well. In this case, the waste is one of time.

Temporary fuel BOYCOTTS will not help. Why? Because you CAN’T have the impact you think you have. If you truly simply stop driving for a few days, and could convince thousands of other drivers to do the same and join you in not burning fuel at all for a few days (fuel that you otherwise WOULD Have burned) you could reduce income marginally for a few days. The key word there is MARGINALLY – and no corporation is really going to care about that. The impact you have would be far greater on your local “fuel guy” if he is a franchisée, because he is the guy who needs people to come to his station so he can feed his family. So, if you want to send a message to the little guy, and give a guy who has little control over the price of fuel a good pummelling in the pocketbook, don’t burn gas for a few days. It’s a big waste of time, but as with most slacktivism, it will make you FEEL like you are doing something!

Lately there have been a lot of rumblings from the same typical group of morons wanting to boycott fuel for the Victoria Day weekend. What a FARCE! People open their cottages, and people get out for the first real long weekend of the summer season. They go out in their boats, and on their motorcycles, and their 4-wheelers. They aren’t going to skip that this year with the winter we had, so you are going to get very little response. IF someone “participates”, all they are going to do is buy gas in advance of the weekend, and that doesn’t change a damn thing except the day the company sold the fuel.

The only way to truly make an impact is to reduce consumption EVERY DAY, and work with others to help them do so, too. That means you have to stop wasting gas, and work at being efficient. That’s going to be very painful for some, because automobiles are ingrained in our culture as the basis of freedom.

How do you send a message about gas prices?

1. Call your MP and tell them to stop sending all the Canadian oil in Alberta to the US to profit American corporations and service Canadians first. DEMAND that Canadians come first – we have more than enough oil for our own needs. We need to start ACTING like an oil superpower for the short time we have that status.
2. Drive less, all the time. Car pool if you can, roll all your errands into one trip, take public transit, walk or ride a bike for short trips. Get a more efficient vehicle.
3. Learn to drive as efficiently as possible (see hypermiling.com)
4. Make investments with the money you SAVE by doing the above in companies pursuing alternative energy – just make sure they are bona-fide improvements, and not simply more-of-the-same (like hybrids – a RIDICULOUS attempt by the auto industry to prolong the inevitable demise of the gasoline engine). We need extreme efficiency and renewable resources – currently biofuels USE more energy than they produce and are devastating food markets worldwide.

If everyone works at this, it lowers demand, and will lower prices or at least slow down the rise of prices. Think about it – if there is a 20 year supply of oil left in the world, and we can use 25% less, it instantly becomes a 25 year supply – more time to develop alternatives!

“Gasouts” and boycotts are a waste of time and energy, and generally are just another way for people to pat themselves on the back for doing nothing.

I have been seeing a lot of these “Carbon Footprint” tests and the like online. Quite frankly, a lot of the stuff in them is total bullshit that is not proven to mean anything one way or another, they are just there to make you a) feel guilty or b) think you are doing something when you are not.

Fact: most of what you could do – even if EVERYONE did it – would not make any difference in the realm of “Global Warming” because ultimately Mother Earth and her relationship to the solar system has more to say about it than you do. Earth regulates herself, and trying to screw with that usually does more harm than good.

That is not to say that I don’t think people should treat the planet better. But, honestly, does ruining the economy of any nation to “stop global warming” – be it our advanced industrialized countries or Third-world ones – qualify as anything OTHER than plain stupid? (You do need to keep in mind that there are environmental extremists out there who would happily make the human race extinct in order to “preserve the environment” – and this agenda is beginning to creep closer and closer to the mainstream…)

I usually score “OK” on those quizzes, but never get a spectacular score because they never take into account the MOST important factor in these things: TIME. Just because you suddenly had an environmental epiphany when you watched that Al Gore movie doesn’t mean you did not do more harm to the environment before you clued in than you can solve by changing now. Sorry, folks, you ALREADY screwed it up. It’s like expanding foam, you can’t put it back in the can. So now I am going to get all Holier-than-thou because I am sick of having people act that way toward me. Read the rest of this entry »

“OMGZ, the CHILDREN!” they cry… we must buy a hybrid automobile to reduce our “carbon footprint”.

These same people continue to leave their thermostat at 24 in the winter and 20 in the summer, running their home HVAC systems ragged, producing “greenhouse gases” virtually every minute of every day. These same people will use said hybrid vehicle (very few of which actually make any significant reduction in auto emissions) to run to the store “for 2 minutes” to get a pack of smokes or to go out for lunch at work, rather than walking or brown-bagging it.

Then they’ll buy some “carbon offsets” from some dubious company with no enforced standards with regard to how they spend the money, and sleep the sleep of the just at night, as though they saved the world by throwing money at the problem and never once inconveniencing themselves. Isn’t THAT an inconvenient truth?
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We live in an age where it is TRENDY to be environmentally aware. To be completely honest, a lot of it makes me sick, but the reasons for that would make up a whole ‘nother blog entry.

The main problem for me these days is how utterly gullible people are about what is “environmentally friendly”. They don’t really do any checking up on the claims of greedy companies – they simply buy into whatever the hype of the day is, and begin participating in whatever practice is the flavour du jour even if it is complete slacktivism.

One place I could rant about is Hybrid cars, but I am not going to bother when the show Bullshit! has done a far more complete job than I can do here. Suffice to say, hybrids are actually mind-bogglingly wasteful in most ways, gaining only slightly in the area of mileage while requiring many toxic substances in order to manufacture their batteries and systems. It is TRENDY to drive a hybrid, so it is the car of choice for slacktivists – but someone who truly cares about the environment is going to find the most efficient conventional car they can buy, plan their trips to avoid waste, drive sensibly without mashing the gas or the brake, and sometimes forgo the car when they can ride their bike or walk. A Mercedes smart achieves far better mileage than most hybrids and has a very efficient conventional engine. And don’t feed me a line about how it is too small – by the time you put the damn batteries in a hybrid, you’ve sucked up the better part of the space you gained by driving that bigger piece of shit. The RIDICULOUS Chevy Malibu Hybrid gives well under a 10% gain in mileage over its conventional counterpart, while requiring numerous additional hazardous elements in its manufacture – and still gets the same or worse mileage than similar non-hybrid models from Honda, Hyundai and Toyota, and scores a 6 out of 10 from the EPA for the amount of air pollution it creates! This is not a cleaner, more efficient vehicle, but it represents the “latest technology” GM offers. Oh – and don’t even get me STARTED on the scarcity of lithium for the best battery technology we’ve come up with to day…

So, to sum up so far: in my view, if you drive a hybrid, you’re nothing more (and nothing less) than a pretentious, pack-following idiotic douchebag. Yes, Ed Begley, I’m looking at you, too – the solar panels don’t save you from the ridicule.

But that wasn’t what I was REALLY annoyed at. Oh, no, not by a long shot. What was it, you ask, gentle reader (assuming you don’t drive a hybrid and are already so hacked off at me you want to burn down my house)?
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