Why are gas prices high? Ask Trilby Lundberg — publisher of the authoritative report on gas prices, the Lundberg Survey — and you will get a multifaceted answer, including:
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.
