Don't drive day ...

Don't drive day ....

I am reading a book about consumerism. One of the themes is about the tension between the "citizen consumer" and the "purchaser consumer". A citizen consumer is more or less defined as the consumer who uses his or her power to demand lower prices, better quality of goods or social change. A prime example are the African American boycotts in the 1920's and 1930's of businesses that refused to employ African American workers. Purchaser consumers are defined (again more or less) as those consumers treated as an economic block and an additional part of the economy like producers or labor. These are epitomized by the consumers of the Great Depression being exhorted to spend and not save. The result of such a purchaser consumer is government programs to stimulate the economy. Another result is the manipulation of that block by advertising and price.

The reason this is interesting to me is because of something in my personal life. My family is facing an economic problem. We purchased a very nice van a couple years ago. However, now that my spouse is working, the cost of gas is quite high. Morally, we do not believe in using too much of a resource. So we are thinking of getting a smaller hybrid vehicle. This has inevitably caused me to reflect on the way the fossil fuel industry holds us in its grip. I made the comment that the only way to change things was by voting with your money. The free market only responds to profits(or lack thereof). It is amoral. If you want to cripple the fossil fuel industry, then refuse to accept its paradigm and its product. It will respond by making its product palatable or change product and business model altogether.

In short, be a citizen consumer.

This brings me to the point. Individually, americans seem to be driving less, purchasing smaller cars, aggregating errands. However, these individual actions are sporadic and measurable only at the largest of scale. They are insignificant at that scale. So what if we were all more purposeful? What if we all decided not to drive one day? One day. What effect would that have?Does anyone else see any benefit in trying this?