Why is this lady so against conserving energy?

Click here to read a short interview on CNN.com with a woman named Trilby Lundberg. She is the publisher of the Lundberg Survey, a survey of United States gasoline prices quoted regularly by news outlets and others.

The beginning of the question-and-answer report has some interesting insight and remarks about the complexity behind what determines the actual price at the pump. And then she says a few things regarding the outlook for fuel costs in the near term future (next 5-10 years) and the role of alternative fuels.

This is all fine and good. There's a few things I would quibble with and maybe disagree with, but no big whoop.

But then, the questioning turns to the notion of energy conservation. I'm just gonna clip the whole part here, as it is worth reading.

Q: As far as conservation, what are the trends you are seeing?

A: 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.

She then, of course, goes on a little diatribe about the great hoax of global warming. But, I don't want to focus on that here. What really floors me is this attitude that conserving energy means depriving ourselves of it. This is so illogical and I just don't understand it. Yes, I agree...it is a product that makes the country (and the world for that matter) go round. Shouldn't that be reason #1 to conserve it?! Why are some people so anti-conservation? I simply do not get it. We can be a nation of economic prosperity and continued high quality of life AND be much more energy efficient. It's not all or nothing....that's the biggest bunch of malarkey.

Whatever happened to the idea of a "penny saved is a penny earned"? The generation of Americans who actually lived through the Great Depression and had to conserve are all but gone.

And then there's this gem at the end.

...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

Right.
Wake up to the 21st century, lady.