On Saturday May 08, 2010, Logan Murphy posted an article asking his readers to consider boycotting British Petroleum. He believes that a boycott can send a message to BP, presumably a reprimand of some kind for the catastrophy it's created in the Gulf of Mexico. Unfortunately, Logan misplaces his angst; BP isn't at fault here, Transocean is. When BP raised concerns over the safety mechanisms in the rig, Transocean gave BP the nudge and wink, saying, C'mon, baby! Trust us! We know what we're doing! Moreover, Transocean is the largest off-short drilling company in the world, a claim you don't get to make with only a single customer in your portfolio.

Logan admits that the effects of boycotts often prove unpredictable. In some cases, they work great, but in others not so much. In this case, we can predict exactly what's going to happen: customer dollars will syphon away from BP to the coffers of other large oil companies, which will in turn re-invest those dollars right back into Transocean and similar such companies. In other words, boycotting BP will not have any effect at all, except to damage customer relationships with BP. This will cause BP to raise prices to cover their operating costs, which in turn gives the rest of the industry the excuse they need to raise their prices correspondingly, citing the damage to the industry and how it causes them oh-so-much operating overhead. It's an open invitation to price gouging by the industry at large. It's happened before. Remember only a few years ago?

The environmental risk will continue, and may even accelerate as a plurality of BP competitors receive increased funding to explore with (using Transocean rigs, of course!). History shows that one major oil-related catastrophy occurs every 20 years (with smaller incidents in between which we never hear about in the mainstream media), but it does not show any preference what-so-ever to any one oil company.

We can apply basic logic to this problem to arrive at a solution which I think Logan can agree with: if the problem can happen to any oil company, and you're concerned enough about our environment that you wish to cease funding off-shore drilling efforts, then you must concede that boycotting oil itself, and not any one company, remains the only logical solution.

Seriously: stop buying oil. Full stop.

But, what are the ramifications of adopting this lifestyle?

• Out of hand, we know you'll abandon all forms of commercially-made fuels (gasoline, jet, and diesel come right to mind). If you're smart enough, you can make your own fuels (bio-fuels from used vegetable oil, biomass gassification, etc.), but remember these all have an ecological impact too.
• We'll see a significant reduction or outright elimination of the use of plastics. Combined with the above, this automatically means you'll have no means to travel with, either private or public. You'll be limited to cranky bicycles with wooden wheels and walking.
• Yes, I said wooden wheels above — it takes seven gallons of oil to manufacture one car tire, so you figure about one gallon for a bike tire, based on their respective proportions to each other. But, you're abandoning all oil, remember?
• Sharing access to resources, not private ownership thereof, will become the order of the day. Since it costs massive amounts of energy to make things, that cost can be amortized if we share the manufactured product amongst many. The longevity of trains helps explain why trains are more efficient than cars or trucks. Contrast this against a humble Toyota automobile, where cars come and go like seasonal fashion. Monorails are even better than traditional trains!
• It also means you'll have no iPad (depends on plastics), no telephone (cellular or otherwise; also plastics), no electronics (beyond home-made capacitors and resistors, and occasionally diodes if you're willing to fiddle with graphite and cat-whiskers; depends on super-high heat sources to melt silicon), which means no computers of any kind. You'll certainly lose any kind of super-capacitor production, since the nano-tech that supports these products also depends on oil, directly or indirectly. That means cheaper use of solar energy will go bye-bye.
• You'll have no food from most supermarkets, since the overwhelming majority of that produce travels a tenth the circumference of the Earth itself to get to your table. Growers also rely on pesticides made from oil products. And, let's not forget Monsanto and their genetic engineering of plants resistant to hydrocarbon-derived insecticides and herbicides; of course, manufactured using oil derivatives too: heat, electricity, etc.
• You'll have no metallurgy to speak of either, as the high temperatures needed to forge goods involving the more exotic metals or alloys won't exist anymore (kiss goodbye to those ear-buds, for they use high-powered rare-earth magnets manufactured with very high temperatures).

So, if you always wanted to be an astronaut, you can kiss all your hopes and dreams goodbye. It'll never happen. Ever.

Long story short, the ramifications of this lifestyle all point to you living a life not unlike that of an American Indian, at least in the long term. Short-term, we're able to stretch our resources a bit further along, provided you wise up and get involved with a Transition Town. Still, any of the far-out dreams you once had, of exploring space or of probing the quantum mechanics of our world, will be totally, utterly, and forever vanquished.

We have three gas giant planets and their countless moons in our solar system, whose atmospheres are composed virtually entirely of usable hydrocarbons — can we harvest hydrocarbons from these planets instead? Sure, and I've been advocating this for years. But, that opportunity no longer exists. We no longer have the material resources to make this option anywhere near cost viable. Instead, we chose to make war with other nations on this planet. Instead of investing our resources in production (how do we harvest hydrocarbons from Jupiter, anyway?), we chose the path of destruction (how do we punish Iran for holding nuclear capabilities the IAEA says doesn't exist, while sating enough of the public to not turn this into a political fiasco until after our goals of oil domination have been reached?). And, I'm not talking about the U.S.A. alone here, although we certainly are the most visible beacon of utter stupidity this universe has ever seen. Other nations on this planet, during their own times, also have suffered, or will eventually suffer, our fate. Are you listening, China?

But, I'm digressing — let's pretend we have the material resources to make this all happen. We have other problems. First and foremost, to make this profitable, we need to put an entire oil refinery in space. Doable, sure, but not while our governments are waffling over the future of space exploration, hemming and hawing about its practical benefits while it receives a grand total funding less than 1% of the nation's total war expenditures. These refineries need to be mobile. We empty one in orbit around Earth, while the refinery around Jupiter takes on another shipment. They would refine their loads on the way back to Earth. Obviously, the total energy refined must exceed the total energy costs of shipping an entire refinery to another planet, gassing up, shipping it back, and transporting the products back down to Earth.

OK, we've solved the profitability problem. What happens when a refinery explodes in space? All that out-gassing will act like a jet engine (remember what a jet is — it's a controlled, directed explosion!), sending it wildly off-course. Is there a potential for a refinery to burn up and explode in Earth's atmosphere? If it explodes near Earth orbit, you better believe it. Capable of striking the surface of the planet? If it's already in Earth orbit, absolutely. Something the size of Deepwater Horizon won't burn up completely in the atmosphere. Consider, it makes the space shuttle look like a tugboat in comparison, and even the shuttle had bits fall to the ground when it exploded on entry. Is it worth the risk? Maybe — I don't know for sure. But considering the wealth of renewable resources on this planet, I'd like to explore those first. If they work, we won't need such drastic measures, leaving the oil we use primarily for lubricant purposes, which will extend our supply quite a bit.

To conclude, unless Logan wants to live his life as an American Indian so many years ago, you're not going to solve any problems by boycotting BP. It just won't work. The statement you make by doing so actually delivers the wrong message to the wrong people at the wrong time. You really should be asking for a gross reduction in oil consumption en toto.