Each time you boy a product, you are endorsing the product and the corporation that produced it - whether you meant to or not. Likewise, by choosing not to buy a certain product, or products from a certain company, you can protest irresponsible corporate behavior. By voting with our dollars in this way, consumers have the power to change the way corporations do business.
Oil and gas operations are a major contributor to rainforest destruction in areas as fragile and diverse as the western Amazon basin, Papua New Guinea, Burma, and Nigeria. Many factors contribute to petroleum projects' devastation of forest ecosystems.
The opening of a network of oil roads along pipelines in previously intact forest areas has resulted time and again in widespread deforestation. These roads act as arteries into the forest, providing access for logging operations, uncontrolled colonization, and the expanse of slash and burn agriculture.
Oil and gas operations also cause extensive water and soil contamination through on-going spills, and through routine discharges carried out by oil companies. Around the globe, numerous species of flora and fauna as well as diverse indigenous peoples are currently threatened by the expansion of new oil and gas projects into rainforest regions.
Sadly, much of the petrol is not used in these countries - it is exported to the developed world, like USA and New Zealand. So every time we use petrol, we are contributing to the problem.
When people buy cars, do they think about the most efficient cars, that use the least petrol? Or do they buy big four-wheel drives, that are the most wasteful kinds of vehicles on our roads today? You look at how many four-wheel off-road type vehicles pass our school, compared with ordinary cars, which use far less fuel.
Are we going to be responsible for the destruction of dwindling rainforests and traditional people's ways of life for just a few more months of oil?
Look at the difference between using an ordinary car, and using an SUV (4 wheel drives designed to be used off-road). The SUVs use lots more fuel, emit lots more carbon monoxide, add to global warming, and are far more dangerous to pedestrians, bikes, or other cars. Doctors call the bull bars they often have "child killers", because that is what they do.