Saturday, June 5, 2010

Because Gummy Bears and Dr. Pepper Aren't Spilling Out Into the Ocean or Why I Won't Boycott My Local BP

Over the past few days on Twitter, I have seen many calls for boycotts of BP due to the oil spill. There are some boycotts that are necessary to change the world. This BP boycott is not one of them.

All I've heard is that I'm supposed to boycott BP. So, should I not buy gas from BP or should I not buy anything at all from them? Is buying a 2 liter of Dr. Pepper going to kill sea life on the Gulf coast?

I've also seen a list of other gas stations that I'm supposed to boycott because they buy oil from BP. I have not seen any big movement to stop using gas because it is harmful to the Earth. All I have seen is a call for boycotts of BP oil and that's not really helping the Earth if you're just going to get it from somewhere else.

Hearing about all these calls for boycotts only makes me want to spend more money at my local BP. Why? Because it's my local BP. It's just a franchise which someone, who does not have anything to do with the oil spill, owns. This is the person who is going to lose money from a boycott not the CEO of BP. So all the big deal people at BP lose a couple million dollars while the local franchise owners go bankrupt because the idealistic people out there believe that they can make BP pay for this disaster by boycotting their gas stations.

What it comes down to is this: The damage has already been done. BP has to fix the situation. Boycotting BP is not going to get it done any faster and its only going to hurt small business owners.

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