Filling Station

It's a beautiful sunny day here in Southern Oregon. Just returned from refueling the car and dropping my daughter off at a class. Was listening to Kila while the tank was filling. Watching the pansies blowing in the breeze, marveling at how nature always seems to dance rhythmically to whatever music I might be listening to. Watching all the traffic blow by. Trying to juxtapose all my observations with my ongoing frustration with the state of things on this blue marble of a planet and my own inertia regarding necessary change.

I asked the station manager, after I'd paid my bill, what he thought was going to happen with gas prices. He replied, "Three dollars by summer." I mentioned I'd recently overheard someone say, "Four dollars in one month." He said he didn't see it going much over $3.50, but added that he is pretty certain we'll never, ever, see it go below the two dollar mark again. He told me how he hears people talk about a big government conspiracy regarding gas prices. "It's not that," he said, "it's China. Their increasing consumption is driving up the prices of everything. Gas, steel, etc." I know that he's correct, and I'm surprised by his awareness of the issue. He surprises me even further when I ask him if he's familiar with the idea of peak oil. I suggest that it isn't just China's increasing appetite that's fueling the problem (pun intended), it might also have something to do with the oil supplies themselves. After the peak, the oil becomes more and more expensive to extract. By some accounts, we are at the peak. Others have us past it. Regardless of where the peak is, most agree there is one and that if we haven't already passed it--barring any new big finds--it's nevertheless approaching fast and bringing with it a big change in the way we live.

He says he's familiar with the idea, and says he's been thinking about these issues for several years. He doesn't want to see the price go up, "I pay just like anyone else does," he says. But he also says he thinks if gas took a major leap in price, it'd be the thing we all need to get us off our butts, "but no, they bring it on so incrementally that we don't pay much attention. Get frustrated, yes, but not enough to do anything about it." He then shares an idea he's pondered the past couple of years, one which I say surprises me being that it's coming from a man managing a gas station. He tells me he thinks people should boycott a gas company. "Take Chevron, for example," he says, "get everyone, I mean everyone, to boycott Chevron for a month. It'd kill them. And then the next month, boycott another company. Then we'd get some changes." Then he goes on to tell me that his station doesn't have any room for price gauging. In fact, he shares, they'd go broke if they didn't offer their other services, like the car wash. There's a big difference between a service station and a gas company of course, but I wonder if we'd be barking up the wrong tree to boycott gas companies. Perhaps we need to boycott automobile manufacturers.

According to the Jan/Feb 05 issue of Adbusters: "The EPA repeatedly bows to industry pressure. It has allowed corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) to stagnate for a decade; worse, it is only starting to amend loopholes that allow 'light trucks'- read: SUVs, now 50 percent of cars sold in the US-to avoid tighter fuel economy standards--If standards for light trucks were identical to cars, US oil consumption would drop by one million barrels a day. And worse yet, automakers routinely sidestep laws by altering cars to qualify as light trucks. Or they swallow the fines: BMW recently paid a paltry $28 million fine for not meeting CAFE standards, calling it a price of doing business."

Come to think of it, maybe we should boycott the government...

The station manager and I start talking fuel efficiency, alternative fuels, existing technologies. He points to his brand new sports car (with a 'support the troops' ribbon on the back). He was told it would get 18mpg/city. Instead it gets 9mpg. He's considering getting a different car. I mention that our family has been considering biodiesel. We both agree though, that the best thing we could do is drive less. My driving is something I consider daily. I've made some changes here and there. But rearranging one's life to NOT revolve around the ease of transportation the automobile provides isn't always the easiest task. It should be. But our lives have become so complex and complicated--interesting since all the technology surrounding and consuming us was supposed to make things so much easier--that it's hard, for me anyway, to stop long enough to make the necessary changes.

This morning's conversation comes on the heals of my reading the above mentioned Adbusters magazine the past few mornings (when I could have been using the time to wake my daughter earlier and walk to class with her). It's full of correlations to this conversation. One article talks about the issue of China's adoption of western consumer values and its increasing love affair with the automobile. Setting up a nightmare scenario whereby it's predicted the now 12 million cars on the roads of China will turn into 160 million by the year 2020. In another article I read the following:

One of the most common 'When I was a kid' stories goes something like this: "I had to walk two miles to school. Even in the depths of winter. And it was uphill both ways." Embellishment aside, walking to school is a basic rite of passage for countless children around the world. But these days, horror stories of child abductions have many urban and suburban parents in such a state of anxiety that they insist on driving their children everywhere. So, even if the school is just down the block, everyone hops in the minivan for the five-minute drive. Five times a week, twice a day, vehicles queue and idle in front of schools throughout North America and beyond."

This is absurd. We're slowly poisoning our children with all this idling-literally and figuratively-while we mindlessly guzzle up the last of a precious resource that if conserved might just be responsible for saving our child or grandchildren or grandchildren's children down the road. And this is just the beginning of what we're doing and not doing when we allow our lives to be controlled by fear and "convenience."

I laugh at the gas station attendant for driving a 9 mpg sports car. I laugh, nervously, at myself for not readjusting my life to be in fuller accordance with my beliefs, for I am one who drives her daughter one mile to go to school. Short term "protection", long term death sentence. Absurdities.

To be continued.