BP Gulf Oil Spill Disaster Protest

The Chicago Tribune published a letter today from Jay Goldstein, a board Member of Active Transportation Alliance about how we might collectively protest the BP Gulf oil spill disaster. This is the full text of that letter:

Personal Protest

I agree that if we want to protest the BP oil spill, the answer is not to boycott BP gas stations. (“Bypassing BP station won’t KO oil giant” June 18, 2010) Instead I plan on making my own personal “BP Protest” by walking cycling or taking public transit for at least one trip a week I would normally drive. Transit studies have shown that amazingly 90% of all trips in the US between 1 and 3 miles are driven and only 31% of trips under one mile are made by foot or bike. And if we all went so far to substitute our driving for walking or cycling merely equal to our recommended daily exercise, we could collectively reduce U.S. dependence on oil by between 35% and 38%--almost all the oil we import! So leave the car behind at least one trip a week and help save the Gulf, lose some weight, relax and save money--now that’s my kind of protest.