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Jeff Lockwood, Rainforest Relief, Portland OR (4-9-99)

Someone forwarded me this message promoting a "gas out" to protest supposedly high gasoline prices. I can't imagine how you can think that lower gas prices will lead to anything but more driving, more air pollution, accelerated global warming, more destruction of sensitive marine and rainforest habitats where much of the oil is produced and refined , and more oil spills. Your priorities must be seriously screwed up if all you do is whine about a supposedly high price of gasoline, when ours is among the lowest price in the world, because of huge government tax breaks and subsidies to the oil companies. Considering all the subsidies, the true price of gasoline is over $16 a gallon (not even counting the cost of environmental damage), so consider yourself lucky. Better yet, take a bus, train, bike, or walk. You'll do us all a favor. And please give up this ridiculous campaign before you do some real damage.

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Darrell Rose, (4-13-99)

 

So, you think that you are getting ripped off by the oil cartel? Well, we both are, and the interesting thing is that I don't have a car or drive much. I'm ripped off when I pay my federal phone tax every month which goes directly to the military protecting "all the precious oil in the middle east". I'm ripped off when I pay my federal income tax which goes to subsidize the oil industry. Don't believe me? Read the business section of the Houston Chronicle 4/11/1999 about how Mexican oil companies are bitching about Mexican citizens going to the US to buy cheaper gas and they (the Mexican oil company and gas stations) want the Mexican government to subsidize oil just as the US government does.

 

I believe that the best thing that can happen for this country is for the price of gas to up. Cheap gas is poisoning the air, our national security and our collective health. I know firsthand having been a flier in the Navy that the military launches and recovers hundreds of planes daily in the middle east all in defense of oil. How ass-backwards. We don't need to be running around clogging the skies with our exhaust (have you ever taken a good look out the window while passing thru 3000-5000 ft and seen the brown sh** that we call air that we all breathe?) worrying about a bunch of precious oil wells. We don't need to use our military to watch after and protect an obsolete form of energy that poisons the air and compromises and indepts us to other countries. Fuel cells, solar and nuclear can provide for us, that and showing people how they poison themselves when they use their car to go 1/4 mile down the road because they are too fat or lazy to walk.

 

So feeling sufficiently screwed over by the oil cartel? I am. They've hijacked our government, taxed the hell out of all of us, destroyed the environment (Valdez oil spill, Niger delta being destroyed) murder people (Ogoni tribe in Nigeria, Velera in Venezuela) and shackle us to our jobs to pay for the car you have to have to survive in the environment of their making. Look at yourself as you read this: are you overweight? Got a gut? Got the A/C cranked up because you feel too hot? Can't walk outside because it is too hot? Can't get to work without your car or get groceries? What if it all disappeared or started going away tomorrow? Would you survive or would your last dying thought after weeks of agony be, "How did I/we let ourselves get in this position?"

 

Now is your precious gasoline too expensive in cost or is it a poisonous placebo numbing you to your dependence and the destruction of our environment.?

 

-- Darrell Rose

 

P.S. Revelation! Let's all call the Arabs et al. derogatory names, they'll get pissed and not sell us any oil, bubba and bubbette will run out of gas and not be able to run us over.....AND we'll all ride happily and breathe easily ever after.

 

Damn, if it works we'll start calling the Colombians derogatory names and win the "War On Drugs".