B FRIGGIN P

Alright. So as most of you know, we have a huge (gigantic, gihugent, colossal, enormous, massive--take your pick of adjective) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico courtesy of BP. Not only is it just myself that is angry as all get-out, it's a strong majority of the US. With such outrage, you'd think we would have some results by now. But, we don't.

There is a big campaign to boycott BP right now on Facebook (with 663,186 fans last time I checked), which I think is a great idea in theory but is far more complicated than people would like to think. By simply boycotting BP affiliated businesses (Castrol, Arco, Aral, Amoco, and Wild Bean Cafe) consumers would be hurting small business owners, not BP. In fact, BP only owns a small percentage of BP gas stations and is currently trying to sell off the rest.

A friend of mine recently got flicked off because he was buying gasoline at a local BP station. While I'm THRILLED that people out there are actually using their voices and rights to speak out against things that are obviously wrong (don't get me started on how a majority of the US sits on their rumps waiting for someone else to bring about change), this is not the way to do it.

The way the oil industry works is that all the oil pumped up by all the various companies eventually gets blended together in refineries. What makes it BP is a special chemical solution that they use when they do finally ship it out to the gas stations (if they even do that), they make a majority of their profit from drilling, not providing.

Solving this crisis is deeper than simply boycotting. I honestly believe this is Mother Nature telling us to wake the heck up and realize how dependent on energy we are. If we really want to hurt BP, we need to LOWER our energy consumption. This means turning of light switches, unplugging chargers and electronics, driving less (use biking/walking/using public transit instead), buying local groceries, and raising your thermostat in the summer, lowering it in winter. Obviously there are about a billion other ways of conserving energy, but these are the main ones that popped up into my mind.

By lowering our energy use, we are lowering the demand of oil, hence taking money away from BP and other big wigs. And when you decide to stop buying gasoline make sure to support your local business owners and pick up some milk from their shop. Enough lives are effected by this spill, we don't want to systematically crush our people by misplacing our rage.

Another tactic is to start writing, calling, and emailing our legislators to tell them you care about this issue and demand that they intervene more than they already have. Demand that BP pay extensively to the folks who have lost their income for who knows how many years due to this spill. Demand greener legislation.

We owe it to ourselves and our environment (have you not seen those pelicans dying because the oil is burning them alive!?) to start lowering our energy consumption. Every person counts in this fight, so don't ever get the idea that you're just one person and can't make a difference, because you CAN.

To get an idea of how much wildlife is affected by this spill check out this link: http://dailydeadbirds.com/

Peace and Love,

Rae