A little request...
I normally don't forward e-mail spam, and I'm not (really) today. But the nugget at the heart of one I got a little bit ago strieks me as worth spreading, although not as clumsily worded.
You remember the "don't-buy-gas-for-a-day" boycott? You know that was complete BS, right? Even if everyone in the country did manage to abstain for 24 hours, the oil companies wouldn't care. They know we need it, they knew we'd be back. And we were. To really hit them in the pocketbook it has to be long-term.
I've seen too many people echoing the rationalizations fed to them by the media and the squatters in the White House. "It's expensive to refine." "Our refineries are outdated and inefficient." "The price of crude is up so it's more expensive from the source." And so on and so on. The only one I'll come close to conceding is the outdated-refineries one. I do think we need to build new, efficient, clean refineries to replace the decades-old ones we're still trying to keep running. Be better if we didn't have to, but we're not gonna wean off of oil overnight, no matter how much I might wish otherwise.
If oil is so expensive to get and so expenisve to refine, then how come Exxon-Mobil -- the most profitable corporation in the history of corporations -- has been consistently showing record profits for the last several years? Note for the record, "profit" = "money you make after operating costs are covered. And to top it off (that was a gasoline pun for the slower kids in the audience), the U.S. Supreme Court just gave them a bye on the Exxon Valdez damages. The original $5billion chopped to $2.5billion, and now to $500million.
So let's get serious. Do not buy from Exxon-Mobile. Period. Tell your friends and family to stop buying from Exxon-Mobil. Tell complete strangers in line at the grocery store to stop buying from Exxon-Mobil. Hell, I would personally extend that to include British Petrol (BP), Atlantic-Richfield (ARCO), Shell... I've been buying pretty much only from Chevron since I started driving, as the least-worst of the bunch.
Probably won't put 'em out of business. Enough people won't bother to change their habits, or don't think that they have enough of an impact. With luck, we'll turn those record profits into record losses, maybe even trigger a pricing war. Be nice while we're waiting for the non-sucky electric cars to come along to be able to enjoy $1.30/gal gas again. *heh*
Drive less. Buy local. Work local. If possible. Carpool. Ride mass transit. Ride your bike. Walk. Again, if possible. But we're not going to be oil-independent for a while yet, so let's at least see if we can ease the hemorrhaging of money from 98% of America's citizens.
You remember the "don't-buy-gas-for-a-day" boycott? You know that was complete BS, right? Even if everyone in the country did manage to abstain for 24 hours, the oil companies wouldn't care. They know we need it, they knew we'd be back. And we were. To really hit them in the pocketbook it has to be long-term.
I've seen too many people echoing the rationalizations fed to them by the media and the squatters in the White House. "It's expensive to refine." "Our refineries are outdated and inefficient." "The price of crude is up so it's more expensive from the source." And so on and so on. The only one I'll come close to conceding is the outdated-refineries one. I do think we need to build new, efficient, clean refineries to replace the decades-old ones we're still trying to keep running. Be better if we didn't have to, but we're not gonna wean off of oil overnight, no matter how much I might wish otherwise.
If oil is so expensive to get and so expenisve to refine, then how come Exxon-Mobil -- the most profitable corporation in the history of corporations -- has been consistently showing record profits for the last several years? Note for the record, "profit" = "money you make after operating costs are covered. And to top it off (that was a gasoline pun for the slower kids in the audience), the U.S. Supreme Court just gave them a bye on the Exxon Valdez damages. The original $5billion chopped to $2.5billion, and now to $500million.
So let's get serious. Do not buy from Exxon-Mobile. Period. Tell your friends and family to stop buying from Exxon-Mobil. Tell complete strangers in line at the grocery store to stop buying from Exxon-Mobil. Hell, I would personally extend that to include British Petrol (BP), Atlantic-Richfield (ARCO), Shell... I've been buying pretty much only from Chevron since I started driving, as the least-worst of the bunch.
Probably won't put 'em out of business. Enough people won't bother to change their habits, or don't think that they have enough of an impact. With luck, we'll turn those record profits into record losses, maybe even trigger a pricing war. Be nice while we're waiting for the non-sucky electric cars to come along to be able to enjoy $1.30/gal gas again. *heh*
Drive less. Buy local. Work local. If possible. Carpool. Ride mass transit. Ride your bike. Walk. Again, if possible. But we're not going to be oil-independent for a while yet, so let's at least see if we can ease the hemorrhaging of money from 98% of America's citizens.