Car talk

Gas drag

by Laura A. Siegel

The Great American Gas Out started with an e-mail. But no one seems to know just whose idea it was. "If there was just one day when no one purchased any gasoline, prices would drop drastically," the e-mail claimed. Some versions were signed by a California attorney -- who couldn't be reached for comment -- but many were anonymous. The e-mail spread like a virus around the US and Canada last winter, spawning groups such as the California-based Citizens Against High Gas Prices, which helped promote the boycott.

Now the boycott's back, and it's bigger. A new e-mail announces a three-day gas boycott planned for April 7, 8, and 9 -- and again, no one knows where it originated. Citizens Against High Gas Prices did send out an e-mail suggesting a second one-day boycott, but that version didn't prevail. "There were thousands of e-mails, with everybody having their own strategy," says Lowe Barry, chairman of Citizens Against High Gas Prices and president of a religious cable channel. "The April 7, 8, and 9 e-mail caught fire, so we went along with [those] date[s]." A private company created a GasOut.com Web site, and another e-mail went around recently that tried to reschedule the boycott for late March -- but that didn't catch on either.

Barry, for his part, wants to see prices drop back to a dollar a gallon. We've had a spike in gasoline prices this year; the average per-gallon price in the US last month was $1.57. Why? Because exporting countries cut output while demand increased worldwide. We're vulnerable to such shifts because we depend so much on foreign oil supplies -- more than half our gas came from overseas sources last year. Prices have been falling in the past few weeks, though, and on March 28 OPEC agreed to increase production; new supplies will hit US shores around the end of May.

Though prices seem high, adjusted for inflation they're not so bad. We got used to the unprecedented low prices of 1998 and early 1999. In contrast, gas cost $2.53 a gallon in adjusted dollars during the 1981 shortage. And Europeans and Asians pay triple what we do -- in fact, according to Barry, Australia and Sweden are staging Gas Outs too.

Will the Gas Out have any impact? If you believe the new e-mail, it will: "We brought the prices down once before, and we can do it again!" it brags in a claim that's impossible to prove.

"It looks like a wonderful feel-good thing for people to do," says John Howat, an energy specialist at the National Consumer Law Center. "But it doesn't change the dynamic that prices are too high, in large part, because we use too much fossil fuel." The Gas Out doesn't ask us to buy less gas -- just to wait a few days.

The real problem is America's dependence on fossil fuels, which affects not just our pocketbooks, but our environment and our national security, says Rob Sargent, legislative advocate for MassPIRG. He says: "We need to demand that the oil and auto industries stop obstructing policies that would cure our addiction to oil" -- policies such as raising fuel-efficiency standards and developing alternative energy sources.

Consumers can play a part, but three days won't cut it, says Joyce McMahon, spokesperson for the state's Division of Energy Resources. Making a real difference would require bigger lifestyle changes, such as buying fuel-efficient cars, carpooling or taking public transit, and walking to the corner store. Not only would these changes reduce our gas bills, they would also reduce demand -- which in the long run would lower prices.

That's not what a lot of people want to hear. "We are Americans," says Barry. "We like traveling. We shouldn't have to travel less."