After the wide syndication of the Associated Press feature on Trilby Lundberg and the firm I used to run, Lundberg Survey, there was very little reaction in websites or letters-to-the-editor. From within the family among environmentalist Lundbergs, and from some Culture Change readers, there was consternation about her comments. But I see an opportunity in stirring public debate on peak oil and climate change.

All too many news stories of relevance and significance pop up and are quickly overtaken by more news. But could it be that the newspapers and corporate websites were only too happy to print a pro-gas-guzzling feel-good story? After all, selling SUVs and lesser global warmers is the big revenue base for newspapers and most of the U.S. corporate media.

I thought it would serve the public and get Culture Change’s message out if some follow-up could occur. Such as, has Lundberg Survey looked into peak oil? What is Trilby's thinking on peak oil and petrocollapse? Is it the Exxon view of perpetually rising plenty, or the stance of one of the more moderate oil companies? Does her climate-change denial have anything to do with a policy on peak oil? Perhaps more interviews with Trilby Lundberg will yield rounded journalistic inquiry as well as editorials.

Here are excerpts of the AP feature guaranteed to rankle not just most culturechange.org readers, but even the average reader of Sierra magazine (always replete with "green" car ads). Headlines varied, but usually contained fun phrases such as "Gas Guru" or "Princess of the Pumps":

"Trilby Lundberg, guru of gasoline prices, has no idea how many miles her new Mercedes-Benz gets per gallon..." This is intended to convey her level of wealth, but some readers must have recoiled at unconsciousness regarding the besieged environment and the effects of U.S. oil/military policy around the world. No follow-up story appeared and challenged the all-too common uncaring attitude of gasoline extravagance until now; this reflects our not-so-conservationist times.

"’...the cost of crude oil isn't the only reason for the skyrocketing prices. Demand, taxes, weather and government regulations all figure into the complex equation...’", she said. [No factor is offered regarding war or destruction of either the environment or people's health.]

"[Trilby] condemns the ‘overzealous meddling’ of the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies, and said government-mandated reformulation of unleaded gas and engine modifications aimed at curtailing emissions are more to blame for gas price increases than the worldwide Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries."

Under my direction in the 1970s Lundberg Survey produced special reports for the EPA to help the agency phase the lead out of gasoline in the U.S. - was this "overzealous meddling"? Lundberg Survey, prior to Trilby’s ascendance, published the "bible of the oil industry," the Lundberg Letter, and we never criticized environmental regulations - that was what the American Petroleum Institute (API) did. The API has always been, in addition to being statisticians and PR officials, rabid major-oil firm lobbyists that did not represent all oil-people's views or values.

"...she calls global warming a ‘boogeyman’ for political opportunism. Those who promote the theory are trying to create a power base and ‘believe global warming is a reason to hike taxes and hike prices,’ she said." It is as if Trilby is a consumer advocate for cheap gasoline, as are the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Hugo Chavez. However, those gentlemen are keenly aware of global warming.

"Lundberg balks at suggestions that she is a tool of the oil industry." [- good try, Jeff. You did successfully portray my sister's anti-environmentalism, even if the remarks embarrassed other Lundbergs.]

After the recent AP story came out, I reached the reporter, Jeff Wilson of the L.A. bureau, in hopes of interesting him in peak oil and other subjects "the other Lundberg" would discuss in a follow-up story. I was surprised when he told me he remembered me well at Lundberg Survey and that he knew about Culture Change. Since I was not in the story, it occurred to me that the previously personal-interview-shy Trilby needed a media boost and got the reporter to agree to eliminate certain topics. Or, was AP just helping their affiliated newspapers sell more SUVs?

I tried to interest Jeff in a serious follow-up on oil issues, but he wasn’t interested except to offer to mention me in an upcoming Los Angeles Auto Show story in November (as the guy who deliberately has no car). Disappointed in his lack of interest, I didn’t have time to seek out more receptive reporters to generate a follow-up piece on peak oil and global warming. Hopefully, this response to the Gas Guru story may get a little traction if Culture Change readers send this to reporters, editors and AP offices.

Trilby Lundberg has emerged as one of the few media personalities willing to be openly anti-environment as well as skeptical of the scientific reality of global warming. As a classical pianist, she could have a great time jamming with fellow classical pianist Condoleeza Rice, formerly of Chevron which used to be and may still be Lundberg Survey’s top client. I suggest they have a go at Mason Williams' "Classical Gas," one of Trilby's favorites. According to a new study by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies,

"Earth's temperature could be reaching its highest level in a million years, American scientists said yesterday... Comparison of the current global temperature with estimates of historical temperatures - based on a study of ocean sediment - showed the current temperature was now within 1C of the maximum temperature of the past million years." - September 26, 2006, Guardian Unlimited

Could the following carry more weight in the minds of too many media executives, reporters and Lundberg Survey?:

"I will be an active part of any leadership effort to prevent [global warming legislation] passing in the House." - Outgoing chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), at an event hosted by the American Petroleum Institute, December 4, 2006.

This column's reply to the AP story comes when gasoline prices are not on one of their major, rapid upswings. Lundberg Survey reports national price averages twice a month, based on 7,000 stations that major oil companies want surveyed for competitive analysis and growth potential. National price trends are merely a bonus result of this purely market-oriented (non-academic) research, if the survey is conducted the way it was when we had hundreds of drivers wasting gasoline to pull into stations with clipboards. Until several years ago, Lundberg was the only data source.

It's a different "market feel" when consumers and Wall Street are disturbed by an oil or gasoline price spike that threatens to get out of control. Just because petroleum prices are a bit down now does not mean we are finished with high prices; they'll go right up due to the "fundamentals" (although the fundamentals are usually described as narrow market factors). In an essay on the Grist website on Sept. 22, 2006, I explain,

"As for when the oil crash will hit, it is possibly imminent considering geopolitical instability, extreme weather events, and the demand-driven 'industry fundamentals' of supply strain and high utilization of capacity. With falling production from key mega-oilfields, our days as oil guzzlers are numbered. It's not going to change because of some big find."

A counterbalancing interview with me might come about and inform those who were misled or appalled by the AP story. My erased history at Lundberg Survey is not anything approaching the gravity and urgency that most people feel about climate change and the coming crashing end of oil-guzzling. So here are a couple of questions a reporter might ask me, followed by my answers:

Q: Was peak oil ever discussed at Lundberg Survey prior to your leaving in 1986?

A: No; we too were lulled into believing the nation and the world were adept at discovering and extracting more and more oil, although I had always questioned the capacity of the Earth to give endless crude oil. I guess we also assumed technological advances would substitute for oil. I remember seeking out seminars on "synfuels" in the late 1970s. It was after leaving not just Lundberg Survey but upon leaving for-profit work in 1988 that I learned about peak oil, when I reviewed the book Beyond Oil: The Threat to Food and Fuel in the Coming Decades, for the journal Population and Environment.

Q: Was the family firm or the family itself rabid cheerleaders for oil and against the environmentalist cause?

A: No. Mesa Lundberg ran an organic ranch and took care of five kids while her husband worked two jobs, one of which was as the host of the very first television talk show which ran for 7 years in Los Angeles. His programs were muckraking against pollution, monopolistic business lobbies, and other threats to public health and social justice. At the Lundberg Letter and on Nightly Business Report our message was against ethanol maximization as "agricultural strip mining" and we criticized Reaganism for its support of the Contras.

Q: Have you and Trilby always been at opposite ends of the political spectrum?

A: No, her humble car of the mid 1980s, prior to her being severed from Lundberg Survey until she returned, sported the bumper sticker "No Vietnam War in Central America." So, when I finally got to talk with her again about politics, at a mediation over our mother in 2001, and I told her I had participated in the famous anti-WTO protests in Seattle, I was surprised she disapproved. We didn't get the chance to discuss what would happen to world trade once the cheap (subsidized) oil for transport is gone. At that point, we can all pursue something new. At one time all the Lundberg family was very close to nature, and we may return there along with the rest of the industrialized world as petrocollapse levels the playing field.

The Lundberg family saga got complicated when the members who had sailed to Europe had to move back to Los Angeles due to disagreement over the family business in 1969 - our downfall. To fast forward and make sense of the current "story" and Trilby, the AP story can use some more clarification:

"[Trilby Lundberg] worked closely with her father before his death." The opposite is closer to the truth. "I'm self-made or lucky," she said. An interesting question might be, "how did she take over Lundberg Survey without being self-made, or just 'lucky?'" The AP story went on, "Lundberg took over the market research firm in 1986 after the death of her father, Dan Lundberg." There was no mention of the two CEOs between "Oil Guru" Dan Lundberg and Trilby, namely Jan Lundberg and Dan's widow and our mother Mesa Vernell Lundberg. (I decided to leave under a settlement with our mother, the next Chairman.)

The "lucky" aspect of Trilby’s career is tied to a corporate take-over, assisted by her former OPECer then-husband. This was at a time when the rightful owner (Mesa) had suffered a stroke, and when the previous CEO and co-owner, me, had left quietly for peace in the family and was delighted to "escape L.A." to go live in Virginia. This was my lucky development, as I soon abandoned working for oil companies, government and utilities in favor of fighting for the environment. USA Today had the headline about my activities in 1988, "Lundberg Lines Up With Nature." Without Trilby's ambitious drive, I might still be in southern California and answering to Chevron. After twenty years, and Chevron's admission of the reality of peak oil, now we can and should indeed all get together, as petroleum experts and as a society of oil addicts, putting differences and the past behind, to discuss and prepare for petrocollapse, climate change and culture change.

–  Jan Lundberg

This piece was Culture Change Letter #146 Links and further reading: Lundberg Survey: www.lundbergsurvey.com "(How can we already be) looking at the end of the age of oil and abundant energy" - by Jan Lundberg: gristmill.grist.org "Popular Lundberg fuel price survey is a real gas," by Jeff Wilson of Associated Press, August 21, 2006 seattlepi.nwsource.com Beyond Oil: The Threat to Food and Fuel in the Coming Decades, excerpt of Jan Lundberg's review in Population and Environment: dieoff.com/page20.htm "Earth's temperature is dangerously high, Nasa scientists warn" - Sept. 26, 2006, Guardian Unlimited www.guardian.co.uk Essays on family cohesion and the Lundberg family saga in the cultural context of urban sprawl and materialism (Mesa Lundberg's legal case was lost on appeal, so the last link relates to non-current information): culturechange.org/e-letter-13cont.html culturechange.org/issue19/familycohesion.htm culturechange.org/MVLundberg_page.html To recommend Culturechange mailing list to a friend, send this link: http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/culturechange To support the nonprofit Culture Change and its projects, make a donation ONLINE. Jan Lundberg P.O. Box 4347 Arcata CA 95518 USA Tel. 1-215-243-3144 If you are interested in receiving Culture Change's e-letter you can sign up to get Culture Change Letter directly, by clicking here: E-Letter Jan Lundberg, co-founded the Lundberg Letter, called "the bible of the oil industry", in 1973. Mr. Lundberg ran Lundberg Survey Incorporated for the petroleum industry, utilities and government. He founded the Sustainable Energy Institute (SEI) in 1988. We promote and practice cultural change as key to sustainability. Does economic growth via fossil fuels and materialism provide real security? A sustainable society features car-free living and growing food locally. Communities must return to self-sufficiency for food and energy. Culture Change and SEI: P.O. Box 4347 Arcata California 95518 USA E-mail: info@culturechange.org Website: www.CultureChange.org To support Culture Change and its projects, send a secure online donation at our website http://www.culturechange.org/funding.htm. Keep Culture Change alive. We have no grants or subsidies, only the public's donations.

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