Re: Insipid New York Times editorial

[Jed Rothwell]

RC Macaulay wrote:

Thomas Friedman, a columnist for the Times, in today's op-ed section 
writes . . .

I was going to mention Friedman. I was a little unfair to the Times. Their 
unsigned editorials downplay the scope of problems such as global warming 
and energy, but some of their columnists are better. Furthermore, this is 
not a liberal versus conservative issue. Many conservative columnists agree 
with Friedman and me.

In my book I quote the Times unsigned editorial: ". . . energy independence 
[is] an unattainable goal, largely because the United States, which uses 
one-quarter of the world's oil production, owns less than 3 percent of the 
world's oil reserves." I find that attitude intensely annoying! Of course 
it is attainable! There are no valid technical reasons why it was not 
attained years ago. And it is precisely because we have only 3% that we 
should be making energy independence a top priority. If the people in Los 
Vegas or Los Angeles shared the same attitude as the Times, they might 
say,  "largely because we have so little water, there is no point to trying 
to conserve or recycle the water we have."

- Jed