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Image c/o Sun-Sentinel.com

I checked the news this morning and had a strong feeling of deja vu. Another offshore oil rig exploded today 80 miles off of the coast of Louisiana. 13 people were rescued from the water (read about it here).

My first thought was that it must be some sort of article reprint from last April, but it isn’t. This is a new potential disaster, and none of the political posturing, regulation, or boycotting that we all engaged in did anything to stop it. This is a tough pill to swallow, but the truth is that we are all to blame for these disasters. Every time we fill up our cars with gasoline we sanction dangerous high-risk offshore drilling and deepen our dependency on imported oil.

I’m not delusional enough to think that we can eliminate gasoline consumption entirely, but we can reduce it. How far do you live from your office? What about the closest grocery store? Post office? What errands do you run frequently that are within 5 miles of your home? Instead of turning on your car for these short trips, take a bicycle. If you committed to doing only this 2 or 3 times per week, you would eliminate the need for an entire barrel of oil (or more).

Let’s do a little math:

One barrel of crude oil contains 55 gallons. A refinery can turn roughly half of that volume into gasoline, so let’s say 20 gallons. (source) If you drive a car that gets 25 mpg in the city, those 2-3 5 mile errands per week (1000 miles per year) use up more than 40 gallons of gasoline. Two barrels of crude.

This doesn’t take into account any other driving. Just the short trips that could easily be made by bicycle. Make half of these trips by bicycle (500 miles of errands in a year) and you’ve saved an entire barrel of crude oil.

The US uses nearly 20 million barrels of oil every day. That’s more than 7 billion barrels per year. Each of us on average uses 50-75 of those barrels. Obviously eliminating 1 barrel from your annual consumption is a drop in the bucket, but it’s a start.

Ask yourself this question next time you start your car: Could I make this trip just as easily by bicycle, or on foot? If the answer is yes, then don’t start the engine. Start yours. The best way to decrease our dependence on oil and all of the risks that come with it is to change our own behavior. It’s not about politics or environmentalism, it’s simply common sense.