Interview with Trilby Lundberg: ignorant, arrogant bitch
As one may surmise from the title of the post, I’m not a fan. Who is Trilby Lundberg? She publishes the Lundberg Survey, “a national survey of gas prices quoted regularly by major news organizations[.]” CNN interviewed Trilby (with an apparently Trilobite sized brain) in their “Fueling America” segment quite some time ago, and I saved it for the creation of this blog to write about. If you’d like to be infuriated, read CNN’s interview with Trilby Lundberg.
Some of the more prized gems of the interview?
I don’t accept [global warming] 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.
And certainly don’t forget:
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.
Are you kidding me? Trilby, you poor soul, the planet we live on and the precious market you speak of are not one in the same. In the above comments the two have essentially been equated. (I’m betting Trilby is a hardcore Republican.)
Trilby does not accept as fact “that the human species should not affect its environment.” But wait, only in a pejorative fashion? Some pretty simple reasoning would seem to indicate that if we can impact it negatively, we should also impact it positively.
I also like the part about “consuming less” not necessarily being “good” for our “personal freedom.” It’s this kind of fearmongering that the Republicans have been championing since the unfortunate events of September 11, 2001. Is it just me or is Trilby basically sanctifying our dependence on foreign oil?
And isn’t it grand that Trilby’s solution to helping all those poor people in developing countries out of their “backward, poor way of life” is to use more oil. A veritable fountain of wisdom.
I’m sorry, but it’s this kind of ignorance and arrogance that have left us with a deforested and polluted planet. The solution is not to burn more petroleum. The solution is to rethink energy. I was fortunate enough to have CNN post my submission to a question about fuel consumption. As I said there and as I say again:
The problem with oil companies is just that — for too long they have thought of themselves as oil companies. They are not oil companies. They are energy companies. It’s time to move on.