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Originally Posted by Cynthetiq
I don't see that still. Even if you don't use gas in your car, you still use lots of petroleum based and products that could not have been created without petroleum. Plastics and machinining all require some sort of petroleum. The keyboard you are typing on, the mouse you are clicking with all have varing amounts of plastic which is derived from petroleum.
Just because you use your phone less doesn't send a message to AT&T that you're unhappy with their rates, LEAVING them as a customer is. If talking as a whole industry and you change from POTS to Wireless or even to Internet based... you're talking about customers being driven away.
So you are saying more like stretching your dollar spent on gas. I don't see that as "driving" them away. It's more like making the user of gas stretch their gas mileage out. If you are being driven away as a customer you'll do much more radical things like biking and walking to work. That is something I'll agree to as customers who have been driven away.
But if you are still using the product being offered... sorry you're not driven away, you're being mindful of how much you spend on the product.
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I see that I've been caught out in a consumer oriented rant, which will never hold up to a well ordered logical argument. I suppose nothing will and your point drives home how much of the short hairs the oil industry has the consumer by. Yes, all your points are true, yet as an emotional consumer I am allowed my rant. And I stand by it.
Creativity to find alternatives are as much to driving away consumers in this case as are turnstile hoppers are to detracting from the bottom line of transit systems. As are the potential benefits of avoided costs compared to the concrete benefits of net FTE reductions or reduced O&M and/ or Capital costs in a financial budget.
And in keeping with the spirit of this discussion, I wish to retain what little satisfaction I can get when saying that Big Oil is driving me away from consuming their product in this manner (yea gods, and I, a gas man himself!).
I'd like to point out another creative method that consumers are using to get out from under the heavey thumb of big oil: Hypermiling. This rather timely article came out in the Saturday Star:
http://www.thestar.com/article/442839
http://www.thestar.com/article/440653
around squeezing every last drop of forward momentum out of your gallon or litre of gas as you possibly can. Some of the suggestions are downright dangerous, some inovative, but a lot remind me of my tactic during my univesity days of purchasing gas in 5 dollar lots, hoping to find that cheaper gas station just down the road (you know, at 35 cents/litre, instead of 37), and puting the car in neutral to coast down the hills etc.
Here is the website, and some more references.
http://www.cleanmpg.com/
http://www.hypermiling.com/
Cheers
