Business Insight Zone

Geoff Styles keeps it simple:

. . . What if we could reduce demand by 5% within one year, without a higher gas tax and without having to wait for carmakers and consumers to respond to a new 35 mile-per-gallon CAFE Standard that entails either switching to much smaller existing car models or opting for hybrids and European-style diesels in large numbers? We could eliminate almost a half-million barrels per day of oil imports–roughly the production-quota increase that OPEC will discuss at their December meeting. The chart above suggests that price alone won’t get us there, at least not without doubling again.

The only practical way to achieve such an outcome quickly would be voluntary conservation, asking the average American to drive about 12 miles less per week. It would be truly refreshing to hear the presidential candidates suggesting such a simple–and politically risky–measure, instead of competing to propose the highest future CAFE standard. It would also confront the reality that the responsibility for consuming 142 billion gallons of gasoline per year rests not only in product-line decisions made in Detroit, Japan and Germany, but chiefly in the daily choices of hundreds of millions of our fellow citizens. . . .

We often act as though systemic changes are impossible — or rather, that all systemic changes are necessarily really hard. But that’s hogwash, as Styles rightly points out.

Business context: plenty of companies find that they can save money . . . as soon as they decide to. They could spend less and benefit the environment with less air travel for their employees. They could make it easier for folks to telecommute (which benefits employees, anyway). The list of possibilities is long.

Yes, these things are simple to say. But often, they’re also simple to do — as soon as we set our minds to do them.