Once again, word is circulating through the tubes that we can bring oil companies to their knees by refusing to buy gas today.Once again, oil companies are not scared, and are in fact laughing at you right now, high up in their towers constructed from the bones of polar bears.
Why? Because one-day gas boycotts don't actually involve buying less gas. They just shift the purchase from one day to another, without actually costing the gas station any sales over the course of a week. It's not like the gas is going to go bad on that one day you don't buy it.
As Lowell has pointed out, a one-day event would work only if it was a driving boycott. But that would involve actually changing your behavior, as opposed to a one-day gas buying boycott, which allows you to feel revolutionary as you continue to zip around unimpeded in your gas-guzzling Lincoln Navigator.
The Urban Legend website has an in-depth analysis of why one-day gas boycotts are both wildly popular and completely ineffective. Go read it. A great summing-up:
[T]he only message being sent is: "We consumers are so desperate for gasoline that we can't even do without it for a few days to demonstrate our dissatisfaction with its cost." What supplier is going to respond to a message like that by lowering its prices?
Want to send a message about gas prices? Buy a hybrid. Take public transportation for a day or a week or a month. Walk. Bike. Carpool.
A one-day gas boycott? Don't make Dick Cheney laugh.
I am not very sympathetic to people complaining about gas prices. I feel sorry for the people who drive for a living and those who can't afford to upgrade their cars, etc. I do not however have one shred of sympathy for the soccer moms driving Ford Escursions to pick up the kids at piano lessons, or people who commute in an SUV. Get a Honda and stfu.
A major problem that these boycotts have is that they often happen during the work week, which, if one is going to do it the right way, which is not driving, as you quote Lowell saying, it really means a general strike for all of us who work far away from where we live. And it is just not going to happen. People got to pay they bills.
Now, a driving strike on a weekend, that I can see as more doable.
We shouldn't forget that most of the policies that we want the government to enact run against the interests of the auto and oil industries. They have successfully stalled the creation of a sane energy policy for the whole Bush presidency. They successfully prevent it after 9-11, when the whole nation understood that it was dangerous to rely on foreign oil. 9-11 wasn't strong enough to overcome the power of their lobbyists.
To change policy, we need control of Congress and/or the presidency, and enough public pressure to prevent lobbyists from undoing the mandates that got people elected in the first place.
Now, if people are actually willing to follow through with your suggestion, a driving strike followed with lower fuel consumption, this could be another source of pressure to get Congress and the president to get the right policies done.
And those who engaged in the strike will probably be more eager to follow through with other actions to get those policies done.
The way I see it, if people are willing to do something in their lives, why not seize the opportunity and channel it to something concrete? :)