From Jon Link, who can also be seen at thenumbskull.com:
I hate expensive gas as much as anyone BUT, this is a problem of our own design. We don’t need to stop buying oil for one day, we need to buy less oil in general. We love capitalism– supply and demand is it’s cornerstone… it can help or hurt us. It is just silly to think that one day without gas will do anything to supply and demand. Buy cars that use less gas, walk to places when possible, use mass-transit and bikes.
Gas in the UK is about $5.30US a gallon today.
“The short-term factors… are the impending US driving season combined with a shortage of refining capacity, instability in the Middle East and rapidly growing demand from China” (Sydney Morning Herald).
“The latest oil rally was triggered by violence in Saudi Arabia, where gunmen fired on the offices of an oil contractor last weekend, killing five Westerners and a Saudi.
A week earlier, suicide bombers in boats attacked pumping stations at Iraq’s Al-Basra Oil Terminal in the Persian Gulf, costing some 350,000 barrels of production” (CNBC).
In 2001 the US consumed 19,650,000 barrels a day, the most in the world– Japan is the second largest consumer at 5,290,000… from there it begins to drop dramatically (World Fact Book) in 2003 our consumption rose to about 20,000,000 (Energy Information Administration)