[RC] Who to blame for high fuel costs? - Smith, Dave
Patty: I am as upset as the
next guy over the continuing rise in the price of petroleum fuel and its affect
on my riding opportunities.
Heck, we in N. California are almost always saddled with prices that
are among the highest in the nation. But ranting and raving at the oil
companies and doing a one-day "boycott" will literally do nothing to
solve or even reduce the problem. I don't know where you got the idea that it
"worked last time," but it has never worked and never will.
These gestures are simply
meaningless. I urge you to go to the website in Jonni's post and read some actual
facts about the past effectiveness of these protests. The reason a “boycott”
is meaningless is that it targets the wrong party. To some people, big
business - and oil companies are definitely "big business" - are the
causes of all the world's woes.
Meanwhile, the real culprits
go about unrecognized for the role they actually play. It is politicians, not
business, that have engineered artificial fuel shortages which translate into
higher and higher fuel costs and puts your riding - and your health -- in
jeopardy. And we are the people who elect these politicians who then turn
around and cater to the powerful “environmental lobby” by writing
new laws that make it impossible to upgrade the oil industry infrastructure
because refining fuel from oil is a "dirty" business.
Thus we see state after
state denying permits to build new refineries, or blocking the construction of
new nuclear power plants that would free up billions of barrels of oil for
transportation fuel. These same politicians then make it impossible to explore
and develop new oil fields such as those in Alaska and the off the West Coast. So we
complain about the shortages and resulting high prices of petroleum-based fuels
while, at the same time, locking up the use of vast oceans of petroleum under
our very feet. Does this make even the slightest amount of sense? The
so-called environmentalists and the politicians in their pockets want you to
got out and boycott the local gas station. That way, you won't see that it is
them, not the oil industry that is behind this problem. It's the old
"Texas Two-Step,"
dazzle 'em with your
footwork and they won't see you taking the wallet from your back pocket. You
do what you want about this so-called boycott. Meanwhile, I'll continue to
search for political leaders who will actually do something to solve the
problem.
