With all the foolishness going around about changing the day we fill up our gas tanks, I thought I'd throw down a challenge that makes a little more sense. It's simple and everyone gets to play - whether you do it or not.
The Challenge:
For one week use as little gasoline as you can. Running Monday (5/21/07) through Sunday (5/27/07) cut back your gasoline consumption as much as possible. Yep, the holiday weekend will make it an extra tough challenge.
First, this is a relative challenge; to cut back on your own consumption. Don't worry about comparing your consumption to anyone else.
Second, try to satisfy your transportation needs in a manner which consumes less gasoline than you usually do. So the challenge isn't necessarily to consume no gasoline, just less than you do during a regular week. The more the better, but there is no specific target.
Third, there is also no "correct" response. It's perfectly fine to accept or decline the challenge for any reason. It's perfectly fine to accept and not change a thing you do. And it's perfectly fine to accept and take on this challenge with gusto.
For those of you who accept, do what you can for the entire week - carpool, take public transportation, ride a bike, walk, telecommute. And as everyone knows, life can get in the way: You get sick and have to drive yourself to the doctor, you're late for a meeting and the only way to get there on time is to drive, there is no public transportation / carpool option where you live, you're out of milk and need a quick run to the store, etc, etc, etc. It's fine even if you end up using more gasoline - just keep track of why your conservation efforts got derailed if that happens. The Monday following the challenge share your stories - good or bad.
Ultimately I see this challenge as a gauge of how addicted to oil we really are. How many people are even willing to give this challenge a try? Was anyone able to go cold turkey - even just for a week? How well did cutting back on the habit work in the real world? Or are we just plain hooked and can't function without it?
If progressives (i.e. much of the RK community), who generally support breaking our oil addiction, have trouble cutting back for a week, then our country is well and truly addicted.
But I am sure that most people have a rough idea of how many days a takes between each time they need to fill up.
So, the challenge is to drive less and see if one can drive with the same tank of gas for a day or longer.
But an exact calculation really isn't necessary. Even if you don't know how much gasoline you use, you do know how you go to work, go to the store, go to [FILL IN THE BLANK]. You know how often you go to these places or if you share a ride with someone.
If you usually drive solo to work but for the week you manage to carpool three days, you've saved three round trips worth of gasoline. Or if you do all your errands in one trip, rather drive home between each one, you've saved.
So there is no single calculation, but each of us will be able to determine (roughly) whether we were able to save gasoline or not over our regular habits.
There are some techniques that not everyone will attempt; I don't use many which I think are dangerous. But even using those within your safety tolerance can improve gas millage in a significant manner.
I was able to get my previous car go from 35 miles/gallon to 40. Another of our family cars, which usually got 25 miles/gallon, I have been able to get between 30 and 32. In both cases, the driving conditions are Washington rush hour.
Here is the article from the Post where I learned about these practices:
The techniques are easy to try, and it turns commuting into some kind of a game. Ah, and it also encourages you to keep you car driving in good conditions.
Technically my car takes diesel, so if I wanted to be a smartass, I could say that I use no gas whatsoever. Still, for me a 15 gallon tank of diesel lasts up to 3 weeks (~700 miles or so). When I first started, I was only getting 10 days or so on a tank - mainly through driving more than I do now. I gather that folks who drive gassers fill up far more often (and for that matter drive quite a bit more than I do).
Perhaps the best starting point is to go and get a little pocket notebook that you can keep in the glovebox of the car - just note down every time you buy fuel. Each time I buy, I write down the cost/gallon, total cost, total gallons, miles on the odometer, the date, and the location where I bought fuel. After a month or so you ought to be able to look at the thing and figure out how much overall you use.
Now that we've moved away from Blacksburg, and the price of gas is so high, we don't do this too much anymore. In fact, it's been almost a year since we last took such a drive. I miss them, I really do. This area isn't as nice for it as Blacksburg was, but there's still some pretty stuff here. But with the price of gas... just visiting Blacksburg again costs me sixty dollars in gas!
So I'll use as little as possible, no question there!
Matusleo
Ut Prosim
In the short term, we should do all we can to cut our own gas consumption. On the one hand, it's true that the only one we have any control over is ourselves.
But that's only partly true. Through political participation, we also can control who gets elected and we should make a real issue out of intelligent land use, public transportaton funding and energy consumption. Those two together, the personal and the political, are the only real ways to get off our addiction to oil.
As you point out, there are some serious challenges to lowering our individual gasoline consumption - especially the further away from urban centers you get. And when it's over I hope we'll all be able to have an enlightened discussion about what worked and what didn't, what was easy and what was difficult - like you describe today's effort. Understanding the difficulties of conservation is a key step.
Wouldn't it be good if our educational system, or the parents, had an initiative to encourage these young drivers to
1) walk to school
2) take the school bus
3) eat lunch at the school and/or
4) carpool
Thanks for doing this, Eric.