Want to Get Gas Back Down to $1.30 Per Gallon?

I just checked out the "most popular" Facebook group in the Tampa Bay, FL network: "Want to get gas back down to $1.30 per gallon?"

The group is trying to get people to stop buying gas from two big oil companies in an effort to "force" a "price war" among the companies.

I have a better idea: Why not call or email your Senators and Representative and demand they allow U.S. companies to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve in Alaska and in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida?

Look everybody, you aren't going to make a difference in gas prices by boycotting one company or another. The gas will be sold whether it is you buying it or someone else. Let's do something more constructive.

Drilling for oil in ANWR and along the Gulf Coast will actually increase supply. That's more likely to satisfy our demand than to drive MORE in search of gas stations not on your boycott list.

Or, here's a radical concept: Write your Senators and Representative and demand that they remove all Federal taxes on gasoline. Gas taxes represent a regressive tax that hurts poor people and students far more than it helps anything. Rich people can absorb the taxes; poor people end up having to spend less money somewhere else to afford to get around.

While a few of us are wasting our time hurting U.S. companies through ineffective boycotts, the Chinese and the Cubans are--as we speak--drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Do they know something we don't?

No. They just don't waste time feeling guilty about drilling for and using oil. Oil-based fuels are the most efficient energy source for automobiles we know of at this point. Furthermore, oil burns cleaner than ethanol (that is, alcohol), and producing oil does not impact the world's food supply.

So, let's let the oil companies find some more oil. If Congress had allowed drilling in ANWR when it was first proposed, the billions of barrels just waiting for us would have come online about a year ago . . . you know, back when the price of a gallon of gas started getting ridiculous?

Boycott if you like, but if you want to make a real difference, then let your Senators and Representative know what the real solution is to high gas prices.

Josh Smith is a telecommunications data analyst and aspiring writer. He is the online editor for the Saint Leo University Lions' Pride newspaper.

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