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Gas got you down? Stay home for the holidays |
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Written by the Editorial Board
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Saturday, 24 November 2007 |
Editor’s Note: Click here to read a dissenting opinion.
[I]f you travel, don’t complain about the high fuel costs. You chose to foot the bill.The time of year when Americans typically see a relief at the pump, instead, has set new records in the ever-spiking cost of energy. Crude oil prices bubbled to $98.62 a barrel on Nov. 14, an all time record. That sent gas prices throughout the United States upwards of $3 a gallon and as high as $5 a gallon in some parts of California, another first in American history.
For comparison, the U.S. government Energy Information Administration’s weighted estimates of oil barrel costs, shows that for the second week in November the price was $83.03 a barrel, compared with $51.71 a barrel for the same time last year.
Nevertheless, AAA reports, motorists are expected to hit the highways in record numbers yet again. For instance, according to the automobile association, 38.7 million Americans, nearly all drivers, will travel 50 miles or more for the Thanksgiving holiday, a 1.5 percent increase over 2006.
That’s why we are proposing activism through inaction. If you are sick of paying for high gas prices, don’t buy gas if you don’t have to. Take a stand, or rather a seat, at your own dinner table this holiday season; don’t travel. Instead of complaining about surrendering your wages to oil companies through fuel costs and increased air fares, don’t travel. You could stay home, meet your neighbors for the first time or volunteer at a soup kitchen. Or persuade some of your friends to stay home and plan your holiday meal with them. But if you travel, don’t complain about the high fuel costs. You chose to foot the bill.
[T]he increase in ethanol production for fuel is making beer more expensive.Besides, don’t you remember what happened last year? You and your significant other bickered over the river and through the woods to grandma’s house only to arrive worn and jaded. Your parents embarrassed you, your in-laws berated you and--as a consequence of your being so tired and defeated--you accidentally sliced off part of your finger carving the holiday ham, your mother started crying and you spent five hours in an emergency room. The only thing good about the whole trip was that you were able to drink.
Unfortunately this year the drinking won’t come cheap. Because of our out-of-control energy consumption and futile quest to find an energy drug as potent as oil, the increase in ethanol production for fuel is making beer more expensive.
That’s right. Going green is pushing up prices in your favorite convenience store walk-in beer cooler. Apparently farmers planted less hops this year so they could grow corn for ethanol. And a decrease in the supply of hops has naturally raised the price of beer. Way to go, hippies.
So if you want to lower gas prices, don’t drive--poke a stick in the eye of the oil companies. If you don’t care, go visit grandma. But think how much more and better quality beer you could buy with all the money you’d have saved, even at these prices.
- Asst. Managing Editor Branden Hart, DISSENTING:
(Ring, ring.) "Hi, mom? Yeah, me and my buddies at TheSequitur.com were talking, and we think that instead of traveling to see you this year, I should stay in San Antonio, spend the $500 I would have spent on a plane ticket on good beer and help out the homeless--our own little way of sticking it to the oil companies."
Not going to happen guys.
Asst. Managing Editor Dwayne Robinson abstains from all staff editorials.
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