The Community Alliance Calls For National Boycott Of Exxon-Mobil
Few things impact upon our quality of life as that which hits us in the wallet, and nothing stings the pocketbook these days quite as hard as the price at the pump.
$61 a barrel – yesterday. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? All we can tell you is, what not all that long ago in the collective memory was 45 cents per gallon (okay, 45.9 cents. What’s with that .9?), is now hovering around the $2.55 per gallon mark.
We can’t stop buying gas. An incomprehensible (if not reprehensible) energy policy has made America more dependent upon fossil fuels than ever. Writing letters to Congress or the FTC asking for regulation, investigation into price gouging and profiteering, and to otherwise stop the madness, go straight into the circular file. So what if we, the people who consume untold millions of gallons of gas every week, targeted a single supplier – cutting off the greenbacks that flow into its coffers? Not a one day embargo, mind you. Not a week of filling up elsewhere. A boycott until it hurts their wallets as much as it hurts ours.
First, of course, we have to select our target. One of the major players. A company, say, that profited to the tune of $25.33 BILLION off our backs in 2004, and recently announced record 2005 2nd Quarter earnings of $7.6 BILLION, a 32% rise in quarterly profits over the same period in 2004. [Sure, it costs plenty for R & D, to drill, pollute, increase global warming, pay off regulators, legislators and lawsuits, and otherwise refine and distribute. Consider, however, that Exxon-Mobil had a gross profit margin in 2004 of some 46.8%. That’s some tiger in our tank, eh?]
All right, Exxon-Mobil it is!
Okay, so one guy (you know, that one person who can make the difference) boycotts Exxon-Mobil, and buys at Shell, Gulf or Valero (where a prudent buyer can save 5 cents off of every gallon). Not a dent. If that one person, however, gets five people – or ten people – to boycott Exxon-Mobil, and those people line up another ten, and so on… Well, you know how the Six Degrees of Separation works.
We’re no Cesar Chavez here, and maybe a boycott of Exxon-Mobil won’t do for the American consumer what the boycott of grapes did for the farm worker, but, man, its worth a try, isn’t it? This is grassroots organization at its core. An empowerment of the American people!
To think, the will of migrant workers, combined with the vision of one man, energized a national movement and brought an entire industry to its knees, improving the working conditions for thousands who theretofore had no voice and little future. All of this without benefit of the Internet, no less!
Imagine the will of millions of gas-guzzling Americans, each connected to millions of other Americans through the wonders of the Internet, boycotting Exxon-Mobil, and asking friends, family and neighbors to do the same. Yes, the tiger can be tamed!
It won’t happen overnight (a giant with 2nd Quarter revenues of $88.57 BILLION won’t curl up on the floor and die), but if the numbers joining the embargo over time are large enough, the hit to Exxon-Mobil’s bottom line will, given time and perseverance, be significant enough.
As Americans, we are used to the trials and tribulations that accompany our continuing revolution. Heck, we thrive on it. We take on the challenges to our quality of life as a kid takes to a Tootsie-Pop®, and fear no evil – not even the mega-moguls at Exxon-Mobil.
The message sent to Exxon-Mobil, and through their eventual financial pain (this may take a while, folks), to the other producers and suppliers, will be clear: “We won’t be taken advantage of anymore.”
The seed has been planted. Whether the boycott of Exxon-Mobil ultimately succeeds is now in your hands. Spread the word. Engage everyone you speak to, e-mail or otherwise communicate with. Ask those at the workplace, at your house of worship, in your club, fraternity or neighborhood card game to join the boycott. [Perhaps we’ll even gain the attention of the local press and the national media. Today Long Island, tomorrow Letterman! :-)] Keep an eye on the goal of driving down the price at the pump. The power at the pump - as in the voting booth - is ours.
BOYCOTT EXXON-MOBIL! [For more on the dastardly doings at Exxon-Mobil (as if you needed more of an incentive to join the boycott), visit www.exxposeexxon.com.]
UPDATE: EXXON-MOBIL POSTED 2005 3rd QUARTER EARNINGS OF $9.8 MILLION, THE HIGHEST QUARTERLY EARNINGS OF ANY COMPANY IN U.S. HISTORY!
From this week's Economist....
ReplyDeleteThe oiloholics
Oil prices could yet go higher—unless the world's biggest gas guzzlers curb their thirst
THE price of oil affects the cost of almost everything. It helps determine not just the cost of driving to work or flying off on holiday, but also the cost of furniture, food and anything else which has to be transported from factory to shop floor. The past three global recessions were all triggered by a jump in oil prices. Thus, it should be alarming that oil prices have more than tripled since late 2001. So far, though, the world economy has held up remarkably well: global GDP growth is strong and inflation remains modest. How long can this continue?
The optimists point to a host of reasons for why “this time is different” and why high oil prices will not trigger a global downturn. For example, it is claimed that in real terms, adjusted by consumer prices, oil is still cheap. Most businessmen reckon that is tosh: relative to producer-output prices, real crude oil prices are now close to a record high. In any case, the notion that rising oil prices have no economic impact until they hit the previous peak in real terms is ridiculous.
The main reason why high oil prices have so far not kiboshed the world economy is that cheap money has supported spending sprees and housing bubbles in many countries, notably America, which have offset the impact of dearer oil. The two main engines for the world, the United States and China (also the two biggest oil consumers), have both had their growth boosted by lax monetary conditions in the past couple of years. Indeed high oil prices can partly be seen as a consequence of low interest rates. The two most important prices in the world economy are the price of oil and the price of money, and they are linked. If interest rates are abnormally low (in bond yields as well as short-term rates), then as global demand increases in response, oil prices should rise—especially if production capacity is tight, as it is today.
So referring to the recent climb in oil prices as a “shock” is misleading. The market is simply responding to stronger oil demand on the back of a strong world economy. The increases in both global GDP and global oil consumption last year were the biggest for almost 30 years. Rising oil prices may even be read as a signal that global economic growth has been more rapid than existing output capacity can sustain. Normally, bond yields would perform that role. But the bond market has been behaving mighty oddly, with yields falling over the past year. The rising oil price is thus taking some of the job of constraining the world economy away from higher interest rates. From this point of view, a high oil price is quite healthy, a way of helping to prevent the global economy from overheating. A much more efficient solution would be tighter global monetary conditions. But tighter money now risks pushing the housing and borrowing booms into reverse, tipping economies into recession.
Moreover, even if rising oil prices are a natural market response to rising demand, they can still have nasty consequences for slower-growing economies, such as Europe's. Excessive growth in demand in America and China is, in effect, imposing a tax on others by pushing world prices higher than they would otherwise be. Even more serious, with little spare capacity in the oil industry, such rapid growth in consumption leaves the market vulnerable to any supply disruption, like those that initiated previous oil shocks.
This effect is exacerbated by the fact that the economies that are currently growing the fastest tend also to be the least efficient users of oil. To produce one dollar of GDP, emerging economies use more than twice as much oil as developed economies. Many emerging economies, including China and India, subsidise oil. Insulated from the reality of rising world prices, consumers guzzle more oil than if they had to pay full market prices. This, in turn, pushes global oil prices higher.
Such pressures are likely to grow. The IMF forecasts that over the next five years emerging economies could account for almost three-quarters of the increase in world oil demand. China has single-handedly accounted for one-third of the growth in global oil demand since 2000. With China's oil consumption per person still only one-fifteenth of that in America, it is inevitable that its energy demands will increase over the coming years if its income does too. But China's consumption is also being inflated because domestic petrol prices have not been allowed to rise as fast as crude prices. It is time for governments to scrap price controls and subsidies to allow the market's price signals to get through to consumers.
It is easy to point a finger at China's growing oil demand (which has in fact cooled off this year), but America remains the biggest consumer, using one-quarter of the world's output of the black stuff. America uses 50% more oil per dollar of GDP than the European Union, largely because consumers pay less. As petrol prices have hit $3 a gallon in some cities, there has been an outcry from motorists. Even so, petrol remains dirt cheap in America, compared with Britain or Germany where prices are above $6 a gallon. America's heavy dependence on oil not only leaves the economy more vulnerable to a supply shock, it also pushes prices higher for the rest of the world.
The best long-term solution—for America as well as the world economy—would be higher petrol taxes in the United States. Alas, there is little prospect of that happening. America, unlike Europe, has preferred fuel-economy regulations to petrol taxes. But even with those it has failed abysmally. These regulations have been so abused that the oil efficiency of its vehicles has fallen to a 20-year low. This week, the Bush administration announced proposals for changing the fuel-economy rules governing trucks and sport-utility vehicles, but failed to close loopholes that allow these gas guzzlers to use more petrol than normal cars, a shameful concession to carmakers.
America and China, in their different ways, are drunk on oil consumption. The longer they put off taking the steps needed to curb their habit, the worse the headache will be. George Bush once learned that lesson about alcohol. It is time for him to wean America off oiloholism too.
According to the petroleum (crude oil and natural gas)field records from the Texas oil commission, there is a Bush-Exxon lease for both oil and gas that produced.
ReplyDeleteThe information is from Texas Railroad Commission Bush-Exxon Lease # 28758, District 08 (Ward)
http://webapps.rrc.state.tx.us/PDQ/quickLeaseReportBuilderAction.do
There's also a website that has samples of this crude oil at http://www.texasrawcrude.com
According to the petroleum (crude oil and natural gas)field records from the Texas oil commission, there is a Bush-Exxon lease for both oil and gas that produced.
ReplyDeleteThe information is from Texas Railroad Commission Bush-Exxon Lease # 28758, District 08 (Ward)
http://webapps.rrc.state.tx.us/PDQ/quickLeaseReportBuilderAction.do
There's also a website that has samples of this crude oil at http://www.texasrawcrude.com
Can't we pick a date--say July 15,2008--and the whole country that day will not do business with Mobil!!!! Maybe they will get the message. Please pass this along to all on your distribution lists.
ReplyDelete