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JEFFERSON PARISH — Sure it's hard to take on powerful oil companies operating in the Gulf, but that wasn't stopping Frazer O'Hara, when he took his anti-petroleum message on the road.
When I came across him on Friday, he was about 30 miles into his journey, cycling south on Interstate 310 heading into the bayou. It was midday, and hot even by local standards — a soupy 90-plus degrees.
On the back of his white shirt in large hand-painted letters, it said, "Bicycles prevent oil spills."
In a roadside chat, with semi-trucks roaring past, a sweat-drenched but cheerful O'Hara explained his mission: "I'm just trying to take over the right hand lane as much as possible with the message that we could prevent this kind of (oil spill) disaster," by putting the brakes on oil consumption. "That it's our choice."
The 29-year-old Loyola University grad said he had set out in the morning from Jefferson parish, next to New Orleans, bound for Grand Isle, a barrier island at the edge of the bayou, a journey of just over 100 miles.
Was it legal to bike down the Interstate? No, he said, but so far the police had not taken an interest. That changed moments later when state trooper Johnny Champagne pulled up on the shoulder.
Photo by Kari Huus/msnbc.com
O'Hara rides south on I-310, on a journey to Grand Isle, La. His shirt reads: "Bikes prevent oil spills."
O'Hara was ready with his rationale, his message about oil, and he quickly pointed out that as a taxpayer he had helped pay for the road.
Champagne noted that indeed, it is not legal to bike on the Interstate, but he didn't press the issue nor pursue philosophical discussion.
"Just making sure everything was okay," he said after assessing the situation. After the trooper left, O'Hara explained that he was also working with a non-profit called Team Gulf, an Internet-connected activist group that turned its focus to helping in the Gulf after the Deepwater Horizon accident.
Corporate interests are powerful and daunting, said O'Hara, so people needed to band together to be influential.
"The only thing we can do is amass the strength we have in numbers." For the day, though, he was a one-man demonstration, with many hours on the road ahead to get his message out.
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Way to go man! Hopefully we will ALL remember what the beach looks like the next time we go to buy a car.
I believe this man to be a little mis-directed. First, he is wrongly representing road cyclists: No helmet, no bright identifying colors, no cycling gear (shoes, shirt, gloves, etc.). A cute, sophmoric display to say the least. 100 miles on a bike is no big feat. Many local cyclist in my city do that multiple times a week as part of their normal cycling routine. My message: If this guy wishes to portray cyclists in a positive light, do it as a true cyclist and perhaps with a little preparation and pofessional organization. Heck, you graduated from college....shows you probably have a few brain cells.
Hi Chuck, I agree with you. I too am a cyclist and I believe all cyclists need to practice safe cycling techniques and protocols. It is part of the motor vehicle laws in most of the States.
Does his BIKE have a motor on it? Where are your B@#&@ men. He is not promoting cycling.
Hes saying that bikes dont cause oil spills.
Without large quantities of various fossil fuels now we go down the drain as a nation/society and will never reach energy independence, green or renewable energy to exist/survive on. We may not like it but it's as simple as that. Let's use all the oil, natural gas, coal that we have --- it will last us hundreds of years.
So you're saying don't change until it's too late? Not a very smart plan, I'm glad that type of thinking is now rejected by the masses. We should have been changing our energy strategy back when Reagan ran on "energy independence". What a crock! Scare tactics by politicians to continue our addiction to gas/oil/coal WILL NOT WORK.
kewl..... man....
eeeaaarrrr
So, the solution to the consumption of fossil fuels is that we all trade in our cars for bicycles? Wow, that's the most brilliant thing I've ever heard! While we're at it, let's discontinue the use of airplanes and boats. But wait! How can we justify using rubber for our bicycle tires? It's made out of oil too. And shoes, we'd better get rid of them, or start making the soles and various other parts of the shoe out of something else. And we should probably get rid our our computers, because the plastics used to construct a great deal of their components are derived from oil.
The list just keeps piling up! I propose that instead of trading cars for bicycles, we either A: devolve as a species back to a point where we are no longer able to create and use technology or B: discontinue our existence as a living species, because it is clear to me (as I'm sure it is to you) that after 4.6 billion years of fighting and struggling to stay alive, the last few hundred years of human advancement is just too much for our fragile, sickly little planet to take. In fact, I'm surprised that earth didn't stop turning and become a cold, dead rock the second our first hominid ancestor took its initial wavering, bipedal step.
Please people, please! Discontinue the use of any sort of technology, but especially stop using oil! It may be the only way to prevent the eradication of all forms of life from this delicate orb that we call earth.
"Wow", you have missed the point of the article completely...
actually the point of the article was trade in cars for bikes so no more oil is drilled. This however is not the feasible since vehicles fuels only represent a small fraction of produced materials from oil. It would take a radical departure from current American way of life to stop drilling and production. America needs to educate themselves on what is produced from oil and begin grassroots research into alternative means of producing the plastics and polymers that we use every day from organic materials and waste products in order to make any real dent in the drilling and production of oil products. We will not see drilling go away overnight if at all, but new means of creating plastics and polymers would be required in order to even lessen it. Demand creates a vacuum and nature abbhors a vacuum.
We may never reach energy independence, but every effort helps. If we all reduce the oil and other fossil fuels we use then less drilling, less greenhouse gases, less money going to the Middle East.
Well put, Dead!
-Max
Bikes will not prevent oil spills. How would you transport large quantities of food to a Supermarket on a Bicycle?
Here in Denver, on bike to work day, over 17 thousand persons left their cars and SUV's at home and rode their bikes. In a car it takes me 24 minutes (plus time to find a parking space) to drive to campus, via light rail 22 minutes, via bicycle 25 minutes. I am getting fitter, saving a ton in gas money, and leaving a smaller carbon footprint. FYI: I am 59 years old.
This is a great article! I wish Americans would wake up to the fact that we are addicted to oil/gas/coal. Time to MOVE ON to renewable energy. I live in Michigan and we have one of the best wind farm opportunities, but can't get it done because of right wing freak shows in our capital. It's a shame, but soon they will be out, and wind energy, electric cars/bikes will be in. In Kenny Powers words: Your F*!ng OUT!
our addiction to oil/gas/coal as a resource is driven by our need for plastics and polymers. Fuels are only a small portion of it. Take some time to learn about the chemicals that are produced from the oil/gas streams and how little of production today actually is used by vehicles, look at everything you currently use that is a plastic or polymer or contains plastics/polymers, and you will see much more needs to be done than just switching to a bike. The American way of thinking will have to change. Tens of years of research will need to be done to replace the organics that currently are used in every facet of life we know today. We, the people of the world, the consumer, generate the demand for oil/gas/coal. It is not just about cars, it is about everything we use in modern day life. There is nothing in your or anyone else's home that does not contain something created from fossil fuel. There is nothing in the medical field, sciences, technologies that is not touched by plastics or polymers. Every industry relies on them. This goes way beyond politics and the blame is squarely on every consumer. When you think about upgrading your phone the next time, you are placing demand for oil. When you upgrade your computer, you are raising demand for oil. When you buy a TV, the same. when you buy cosmetics....same again. Now you may begin to see the issue here. Only a little of the oil goes to fueling our cars. Everything else is directly a result of our consumerism and will not change until we change and create new demands. I am not saying do not do anything, that would be stupid. just educate yourself and realize it is not just cars we are talking about here. That is only the very tip of the iceberg.
We are too advanced as a species now to ever want to regress
back to horse and buggy days. So, it's time to use our minds to
solve the problems we are now facing. Some twenty to thirty
years ago we had started to experiment with ultra-power lasers
focusing their copncentrated energy onto deuterium pellets.
Where are those programs now?
w
I ride my bike to work at least 3 days a week. It takes a little over an hour each way and is a 35 mile round trip. I know that it is not for everyone, but every little bit helps. No one is saying that we need to revert back to the stone age and all start biking and never use a product made from oil again.
We just need to change the way we think and really begin to push for new and better green alternatives. We will never totally get rid of using oil, but we can and must reduce it's use in a major way.
Yay for living it out already!! That is the point of the article I'm getting and I ride my bike when I don't need to drive someplace.
Talk and nitpicking gets nowhere. Taking action is powerful.
I declare that your opinion will not work. Believe it or not, the world will use all of the known oil/gas reserves before a new technology is able to take over. In the mean time the world will be subjected to the economic cycles and environmental problems of recent times. Energy sources including coal are as low as 5% to 10% of the cost of newer technologies. Now we aill not be able to incorporate new natural gas sources because of the gulf oil blowout. I also think that the USA can can lower the demand of foreign sources of oil by using new technologies and domestic natural gas sources.
The only problem with bicicles replacing cars is this.....oil refined for consumption in motor vehicles is only a fraction of the actual uses for oil. We would also need to boycot every plastic, every polymer, every wax product, every cosmetic, anything that uses plastics and polymers, medical implants, medical devices, clear on up to current uses in air and space. Riding a bike is cool, but in the grand scheme of things, if every man, woman, or child were to switch to bikes in the USA, only approximately 10% of all oil consumption would be spared. The oil companies would not even feel it. That ten percent would be made up in increased production of plastics and polymers used in the manufacture of the bikes. Also, you still have to oil the chain. It would be more time beneficial to promote alternate sources a develop viable alternatives for plastics and polymers so that the plastics and polymers we DO have will utilized less. As of now, there are NO alternatives and consistently we keep finding uses for plastics and polymers that we cannot live without. The oil companies, drilling, and production are here to stay until the last drop is extracted or alternatives to them are found. I do not see any change in the next 20-30 years of this status quo. It will take years of research to replaces plastics and polymers, or to synthesize them from ordinary organics outside of the oil stream. Some will not be replaceable using materials that do not come out of the ground. I think it is good you are standing for something you believe in, and the excercise is great, but those miles will not change the fact that the consumer economy we have today has placed to great of a demand on oil products and research is not occurring to replace them.
M.D. Stell, you're correct in stating that oil is used to make many products. But 66% of the oil we consume is burned as transportation fuel. Reducing our dependence on oil for transportation will perhaps buy us enough time to find alternative sources of hydrocarbons, such as genetically modified microorganisms, to provide us with the materials needed in manufacturing. Bicycling, walking, public transport, car-pooling, telecommuting, buying more fuel efficient cars, electric cars, plug-in hybrids, hybrids, revamping and expanding our rail way system, are all ways that we can reduce consumption of oil, and allow us to stretch our remaining petroleum reserves until we have viable alternative energy systems in place, and avoid calamitous financial and societal collapse, and a massive human die off.
Oil is not the only finite resource that we are cosuming at an alarming rate. We need a paradigm shift away from consumerism and the economic philosophy of "unlimited growth", and set out on the path to sustainability.
To M.D. Stell
The Department of Energy states that in the US, about 2/3 of oil is refined for transportation uses, not a small fraction.
As a plus you'd be in much better shape and feel younger. Saves money all the way around, gas, insurance, repairs. More enviromentally friendly.
Why was the guy not told by the trooper to get off the Interstate? It seems that is a rule for public safety, including his own. Besides the fact that he said he was "trying to take over the right lane as much as possible" rather than at least using the shoulder. Sounds very irresponsible and could easily cause an accident.
Nice message, but poor way to bring it across.
i think that the point is to do something....anything! he could act like most people and watch.. but instead he choose to hold his own personal protest against this absurd tragedy in the gulf! way to go man! the world needs you! next time wear your helmet!
Unfortunately, transportation in the U.S is geared around the automobile. I doubt if it will ever change.
So it's either all or nothing? This is not a black or white world we live in. We can still use coal and oil while doing our best to use less of it more cleanly and efficiently. We can still use it for some things while striving to find alternatives for others. Committing racial and environmental suicide in the name of maintaining obscenely high profits for the coal and oil companies makes no sense.
Hi Chuck, I agree with you. I too am a cyclist and I believe all cyclists need to practice safe cycling techniques and protocols. It is part of the motor vehicle laws in most of the States.