May 15th has come and gone, and you have probably received various GAS WAR! emails claiming that a collaborative effort to not buy gas on May 15th will help lower gas prices. Or, maybe you received the new GAS WAR email claming that if you stop buying gas from the 2 top oil companies prices will go down. It’s likely that someone then sent you a follow-up email linking to Snopes, which explains that neither the one-day boycott of gasoline nor the selected boycott of certain oil companies will work. In essence, these efforts won’t work because they don’t actually lower our use and demand for gasoline. So, what can we do?

We searched around for options… Regrettably, much of the advice out there centers on making more gas, drilling for more gas, lowering gas taxes, offering tax breaks to oil refineries, tapping reserves, and building more oil reserves. We’re calling these types of options the “Band-Aid Options,” because they don’t deal with the real issue which is that we are dependent on gas, using gas is bad for our health and the environment, our dependency hurts our national security, we are running out, and we are stuck paying whatever it costs because we need to get around every day. So, we are leaving the Band-Aid Options out.

Instead of forwarding the GAS WAR email to all of your friends, what do you think about these options? (more…)