An Invitation to Join the Resistance

The year was 1972 or 1971( it is a blur) In Columbia, MO there was a "Gas War" where for a brief time--maybe it was just the afternoon--gas prices dropped below 20 cents a gallon.

That was the first time I remember being excited when the price of gas dropped.

On that day, I filled up my Dodge Dart for about what I now pay for 1 gallon of gas.

Like many people, I received an email yesterday suggesting there was a way to protest the price of gas without sacrificing. While my friend Charles sent me the email, there are many bloggers who are sharing that same message in their blogs --for whatever reason-- a lot of them seem be members of my space.

In case you didn't receive the email, here is a portion from  Kimber-Lily's blog at my space.
Here's the idea: For the rest of this year, DON'T
purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies
(which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL. If they are not
selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their
prices. If they reduce their prices, the other
companies will have to follow suit. But to have an
impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon
and Mobil gas buyers. It's really simple to do! Now,
don't wimp
out on me at this point...keep reading and
I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of
people!!

I am sending this note to 30 people. If each of us
send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300) ... and
those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 =
3,000)...and so on, by the time the message reaches
the sixth group of people, we will have reached over
THREE MILLION consumers.

If those three million get excited and pass this on to
ten friends each, then 30 million people will have
been contacted! If it goes one level further, you
guessed it..... THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!

The invitation to join the Resistance Movement comes on the heels of Friday's announcement that the former CEO of EXXON is getting a $400 retirement package. Most of the posts on this particular subject seem to be direct lifts from the New York Times article or from a post that ABC News had on its web site.
What I didn't find is a lot of commentary about this from women bloggers. Yes, I found women bloggers who did a copy and paste of the news article and said it was outrageous, but so far I haven't seen any analysis.

I would like to see the analysis.
Does his compensation matter as we watch gas prices jump over the $3.00 mark?
Are people mad enough to try to "boycott Exxon and Mobile" strategy for the rest of the year? If people did that, would it make a difference or is the email just someone's idea of how to get his message out to 300 million people?

Are people mad enough that they are ready to conserve gas using other methods?

Are we seeing an increase in Mass Transit and our Mass Transit systems going to try to lure new riders?

If mass transit isn't an option, then what about carpooling? Are we seeing an increase in interest there? In doing this research I found a blog/community site called Pooln The blog itself is out-of-date but the site describes itself as
"..a national community for folks who are interested in carpooling. We're trying a community/social-network approach to carpooling here. Join the experiment! Register with us — it's free!"

Are people not writing about this because as much as we don't like paying more for gasoline, it still doesn't hurt enough to make us stop going to the fillin' station?

Image credit: Flickr image byjdardin

Tags: gas prices, carpooling, consumerism, business, mass transit, executive compensation

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