Fuel Economy Simplified

First, if you're complaining about the price of gas, let me say "I told you so". You could have bought one fuel efficient car for the household back in 1980 and America would still have $1.50/gallon (inflation adjusted) gas, but noooo, you had to have the pickup and the SUV. And don't even get me going on us kicking CAFE standards to the curb a generation ago.

Gloating aside, although Phil Gramm wasn't talking specifically about Gas Price Complainers when he called us "a nation of Whiners", he might as well have been, particularly in light of the fact that a few minor adjustments in our lifestyles will cover the delta caused by $4.00/gallon gas quite easily, relieve our dependence on foreign oil, restore Reagan's vision of a "shining city on a hill", provide some much-needed adjustment to our consumer purchases and most importantly - for my peace of mind - shut everybody's piehole. The fact that people need to be told what to do to solve this minor problem is the reason Gramm went off on his Whiners riff in the first place.

First, a reality check. The buck and a quarter bump in the last, oh, 16 months, represents about $4.00 per day in additional gas expenditure per household, assuming that each household drives about 27,500 miles each year, so let's butch up and admit that this is not the end of the world. That said, the challenge is still to figure out how to make up that four bucks. To make the math simple, let's make that $4.00 savings a unit of measure, and call it a DOOG (Daily Overcharge On Gas) or "Doogie". You Eco-Geeks feel free to use this in your calculations on the carbon credits necessary to save the planet from the so-called Greenhouse Effect, or the dollar value of Al Gore's emissions - be they CO2, methane or blather.

But I digress.

So, how to save 1 Doogie per household per day? Here's my suggestions:

1) Knock off one cup of coffee from Starbucks and all of its clones and you're good for 3/4 of a Doogie. No offense to Starbucks, their clones or their shareholders, but these are serious times, and overpriced coffee is an indulgence that easily falls into the category of "non-essential". Get up five minutes early and make your own java at .25/cup. Plenty of you have already reached this conclusion based on S'Buck's nosedive on the stock market, so good for you.

Remember that's only one Grande Per Household! You could save an extra one or even two Doogies per day if you, the wife and Brittnie all caught a clue on your way to, from or during work, school or soccer practice.

2) Knock off 6 bottles of water per day, and you've saved one Doogie. That's four bucks back in your pocket, and about 50 billion less plastic bottles in the frigging landfills. Buy a twelve pack and refill the damn things.

3) Knock off one restaurant meal for you and the hubby and kids per month, and you've saved 20 Doogies. Knock off one fast food meal for the whole family per week, and not only do you cover a month's worth of Doogies, but Junior and Muffy will need less clothes, less air conditioning, less Lipitor, and actually stand a chance of reaching adulthood without contracting diabetes, saving them (or at least taxpayers) a cool 50,000 Doogies over their lifetimes. We're talking a retirement fund here.

4) Gourmet dog and cat food buyers. You're a smaller demographic, but you're out there, spending an extra .25 Doogie every day per pet. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, and don't even get me started on the professional grooming, doggy daycare, hip replacements, bypass, chemotherapy, heroic intervention and all the other nonsensical veterinary procedures, representing another 400 Doogies per year. I don't expect to make myself popular with the pet services lobby, but screw 'em. If this exercise serves any purpose, it's to remind folks of the value of a buck, and they ought to be horse-whipped for thinking this crap up in the first place.

5) Cut down on professional sports events. A family of four saves two months of Doogies for every event they skip, and that's for the cheap seats. Why, four outs by Miguel Tejada alone is worth almost TWENTY THOUSAND Doogies, or roughly the gas bill for all of the fans at a typical Astros' game to get to Minute Maid Park and back. If Drayton McClane was to get rid of just two overpriced underacheivers (on a team stocked with overpriced underacheivers) and return that money at the turnstile, he'd be dropping TWO Doogies into each fan's pocket for every home game. I don't know about you, but an eight dollar spiff at the gate goes a long way to getting me back into the ballpark, assuming I don't then fritter that money away to buy one beer or a knackwurst.

6) Speaking of beer, you can kill two birds with one stone these days by not purchasing any of the overpriced national brands: Budweiser, Coors, Miller, etc. They all cost almost twice as much as yellow beer that's just as good (Lone Star and Pabst come to mind), and all of the name brands are now owned by foreigners from places that are not exactly bastions of democracy, including Belgium, South Africa and Canada. So, if Dad switches brands he not only covers the entire household Doogie for the year, but he strengthens the dollar and strikes a blow for freedom in the process. Plus, all the cheaper domestic brands actually buy their beer from the foreign owned Biggies anyway, so you're actually sticking it to them twice.

7) Bigger classrooms. We're trending down to 16 students per teacher. Does anybody in their right mind think that our vast educational bureauracracy is helpless unless we get each class down to four rows of desks at four desks per row? For one thing, since modern classrooms are roughly the size of your average patio home, and better appointed, what are they doing with all the extra space? Howzabout a return to five rows of five, 25 students per classroom (Sister Rebecca could handle six rows of six with one hand tied behind her habit). That would eventually return a cool 30 BILLION Doogies to taxpayers every year, or 375 Doogies per household, and what do you know, that's almost exactly equal to the hit we're taking on overpriced gas.

8) Give Nicole Kidman less work. Hollywood recently reported that, on average, Nicole Kidman's last two movies earned just over a buck for every dollar she was paid. That means that if she stars in two movies per year at an average cost of say, $100 million each, and Nicole knocks down $15 million per, there's a net loss of 42.5 million Doogies on Nicole's movies in 2007, or enough money to cover 50% of what consumers overpay for gas in a single day. And that's just Nicole Kidman. Was Hollywood to blacklist Kidman, Jim Carrey, Will Ferrell, Russell Crowe, Jennifer Lopez and anything directed by Woody Allen, the savings alone could subsidize the bulk of what America currently overpays for gas.

And please don't start on how the poor wouldn't benefit from these moves, and are hit disproportionately hard. Poor folk generally aren't as affected since they use cheap public transportation, don't live out in the 'burbs, and generally don't have long commutes to work. Still, there's plenty that those of modest means can do. My advice is: buy less lottery tickets, less fast food and smoke less. Y'all will be fine.

Finally, the death blow to the gasoline retailers, and also the most pain-free thing you can do: when you go to the gas station, buy your gas, and then drive away. Do not buy cigs, soda, water, snacks, candy, gum or any of the rest of their overpriced crap. Consumers on average blow four Doogies per week on gas station plunder alone. Buy it someplace else at half the price.

So, to sum things up, doing all of the above not only covers the delta on inflated gas prices, it actually puts some serious cash back in your pocket without breaking a sweat, and I haven't mentioned the word conservation once, have I? Once we get serious about using less gasoline, the price of a gallon is back down to a buck and a half, we've broken the back of all the Oil Tyrants, and Freedom and Democracy reign. And if using less gas actually got Al Gore to shut up, well, maybe that's a good thing too.

Most importantly, when gas prices go back down - and they will - do not change your habits. That is the only thing that will ensure the price of gas stays down.