Bad idea.
I got an e-mail about this last night, so I'm all prepared with my analysis.
First of all, it wouldn't work, for a lot of reasons. Secondly, if there's enough support for such a thing to even have a chance to make just a dent, that's enough people to make much more of an impact in any one of a number of other ways. Even just as simple as writing to their Senators and Congressmen, both by e-mail and (very important) regular mail. When a lot of people do that, it has an enormous impact. And it doesn't need anywhere near as many people as you'd need to make any significant impact by boycotting Exxon-Mobil.
Besides......Exxon-Mobil is one of the most widely-held stocks. Chances are that a good many of the people who get contacted about this are shareholders in the company, and something tells me they may be reluctant to boycott the company.
So I say, take that energy and put it into a better strategy.
Interestingly......Way back when, like 1970, I was at a meeting where we cooked up a scheme like this -- different cause but exact same thing. We wanted to put economic pressure on the government to pull out of Viet Nam. So we figured, why not do something that will hurt some big company, and then they'll be with us. Our first thought was CARS -- let's pick a car company, and we won't buy any of their cars, and we'll get the rest of the country to do the same thing. (We thought big. ) But immediately somebody said that won't work, people are gonna get the cars they want anyway. So somebody else said "gasoline," and then somebody said, "OK, what company?" And somebody said Exxon, so that's what it was. For years after that, I was still avoiding buying Exxon. It must have been 10 years later before I realized it didn't make sense any more, the war was over for a long time. If it ever made sense. But, I dunno, maybe we did make the country pull out of Viet Nam.
I got an e-mail about this last night, so I'm all prepared with my analysis.
First of all, it wouldn't work, for a lot of reasons. Secondly, if there's enough support for such a thing to even have a chance to make just a dent, that's enough people to make much more of an impact in any one of a number of other ways. Even just as simple as writing to their Senators and Congressmen, both by e-mail and (very important) regular mail. When a lot of people do that, it has an enormous impact. And it doesn't need anywhere near as many people as you'd need to make any significant impact by boycotting Exxon-Mobil.
Besides......Exxon-Mobil is one of the most widely-held stocks. Chances are that a good many of the people who get contacted about this are shareholders in the company, and something tells me they may be reluctant to boycott the company.
So I say, take that energy and put it into a better strategy.
Interestingly......Way back when, like 1970, I was at a meeting where we cooked up a scheme like this -- different cause but exact same thing. We wanted to put economic pressure on the government to pull out of Viet Nam. So we figured, why not do something that will hurt some big company, and then they'll be with us. Our first thought was CARS -- let's pick a car company, and we won't buy any of their cars, and we'll get the rest of the country to do the same thing. (We thought big.
) But immediately somebody said that won't work, people are gonna get the cars they want anyway. So somebody else said "gasoline," and then somebody said, "OK, what company?" And somebody said Exxon, so that's what it was. For years after that, I was still avoiding buying Exxon. It must have been 10 years later before I realized it didn't make sense any more, the war was over for a long time. If it ever made sense. But, I dunno, maybe we did make the country pull out of Viet Nam. 
