Consumers should not blame oil companies for rising gas prices

by David Stein

There has been a lot of complaining these days across Canada, the U.S., and abroad, about rising gas prices at the pump. It has been commonplace to blame the oil companies. After all, they are greedy, aren't they? The same people who attack the greed of the oil companies, are often the same people who will excuse their own greed. This "greed complex" includes the prism in which people will complain about the oil companies, while selfishly doing little to change their own gas consumption habits. These complainants will often continue their own gas guzzling lifestyles, at the expense of the environment protection.

Isn't it about time that people, who seek lower gas prices, start to take social responsibility for the results of their collective actions? Oil companies seek to profiteer, because people a "consumers" continue to buy higher volumes of gas, with little break in their stride. If Oil companies knew that the consequences of their raising of gas prices would be to gradually "turn-off" the public away from the purchase of gas into more ecologically sensitized lifestyles, "Big Oil" would not dare to continually raise prices at the gas pump. The Petroleum industry is simply exploiting the "bad habits" that consumers have developed around fossil fuel industry. Isn't that what capitalism is supposed to be about -- exploiting other for commercial profit? Oil companies will only begin to hopefully become more responsible, when people begin to make choices as responsible citizens, and not "mindless" consumers, who complain, but fail to take any social responsibility for their own actions.

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