I give you Trilby Lundberg, publisher of the Lundberg Survey of gas prices:
I’m hoping that consumers will see through the rhetoric about consuming less, demanding less, as faulty. It is not a given that consuming less will be good for our economy or for our personal freedom. It is not even established for our environment that we [should] deprive ourselves of gasoline for our personal mobility as well our commerce. And to suppose that it is good to do that, and pretend that we have consensus and put our heads together to deprive ourselves of this great product that makes the country go around, commercially and individually, I think is flawed. I’m hoping consumers and voters will see through that and be able to ignore some of the most extreme suggestions.
I think that there has been friendly as well as unfriendly brainwashing taking place. And when I say friendly and unfriendly, I’m talking about decades of extremist views that have now achieved mainstream acceptance. And the No. 1 item among those affecting current oil politics in Washington is the boogeyman, also known as global warming.
I don’t accept it as established fact, nor do I accept that it would be caused by petroleum consumption, nor do I accept that the human species should not affect its environment. So even if it were someday to be shown to have some small effect on the environment, I see no crime. In fact, taking into account the many, many millions of people around the world that envy our way of life, it would seem more humanitarian to wish them the kind of plentiful petroleum products and vehicles … that we enjoy … to lift themselves out of [a] backward, poor way of life.
Awesome.
(thanks to reader EL, who says:
I think my head exploded when I read it. I want to know:
a) Did you hear it or feel some sort of disturbance when that happened,
b) If your head also exploded in Seattle do you think that will help balance things out,
c) Perhaps, with your platform, if more folks in the middle of the country read this and experienced exploding heads, would that add to the shockwaves racing from each coast or would that help with canceling out this disturbance in the force?
Guess we’ll find out! )
