It's not often that you hear a chief executive telling consumers to use less, please, of the product he sells. Can you imagine a supermarket owner telling consumers to buy less food, or a book publisher telling consumers to read less? Yet that is essentially what the chief executive of Andarko Petroleum, Jim Hackett, does in this interview published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas:
Turn out the lights when you leave a room. Adjust the thermostat up in the summer and down in the winter by a few degrees. Shut off your computer at the end of the day. Carpool to work if you can.
When the oil companies are promoting carpooling, it's a good indication that political or regulatory pressure, or the threat of it, is in the picture. Maybe Mr. Hackett figures that the long term benefit of deterring huge government subsidies to his competitors or punitive taxes and regulation on his profit is worth any short term cost imposed by the risk that people might take his advice and start car-pooling.