Take a look at the ads more closely. Every single one pairs a face, i.e. "everyman," you, me, etc., with a pledge, and the pledge in every case negates itself or deflects actual transformation.
"I will leave the car at home more often." Everyone knows people act according to habit. Here we are asked to leave the car at home once a week, maybe once a month. Whew. Every third Tuesday, maybe? Hard to plan that out with the kids and work and all.
Consider an alternative ad: "I will sell my car and take public transportation."
But there is a more important point here. The Chevron ads collectively are an attack on the actual politics of activism and public pressure. It looks like a campaign, but it's somehow strangely ineffective, enervating. "That's all that can be done?" part of us asks, or feels. "To ask people to make a small change, that they won't make, that I won't make." It's all so pointless to conserve energy, much less to change public policy or reorient Americans to sustainable lives.
That is the hidden purpose of the Chevron ads. They are like white noise amped up to high volume when someone is trying to speak. They are the "they" masquerading as "us." Their true meaning is to offer a babble of voices that bore, slightly irritate, annoy.
Public citizenship, environmentalism, and self sacrifice: this is what it looks like, boys and girls. It's crap.
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