There’s nothing quite so devestating to an over-hyped activist message than the cold appliction of facts. Steven Levitt (of Freakonomics fame) takes exeption with the ‘don’t buy petrol on Sept. 1st‘ email floating around the web today:

If nobody buys gas today, but everybody drives the same amount, then it just means that we either had to buy more gas in anticipation of not buying any on September 1, or that we will buy more a few days later.

… even if it was accompanied by a one day moratorium on all gasoline use … the bottom line impact is a max of $60 million…about 1/100th of the stated number. And from point (1) above, even this is a gross exaggeration of the true impact.

This isn’t even the first time this has been tried (and failed).