I know Wattenburg. He's wrong a lot, but right in some important areas, and a smart guy, in spite of being touted as such on KGO.
He calls these guys "environmental wackos", because of the self-perpetuating legal circus that some are running for their self-interest, rather than their claimed public interest (the same thing Bush Inc does on orders of magnitude greater scale). He doesn't balance the benefits of those problems, however. He's been a vehement opponent of MTBE, and helped expose the oil companies' lying and self-dealing allowed by the Wilson administration.
He's a great proponent of nukes, as you would expect a good nuclear-weapons designer to be. But hasn't the respect for the risk to non-engineers and for such things as, oh, say terrorists.
So he's dead wrong about steadily increasing risk, and uses the same arguments about "but we'll use less oil !" and "but it's cheap and we can deal with it and no more dangerous than sunshine!" and the usual nonsensical crap, from an otherwise highly sensible individual.
One thing I liked a couple weeks ago was his comment, the first I've heard on the national scene on the Middle East -
"We don't belong there, they need to solve their own problems"
I just about fell off my chair... That proved to me he thinks for himself, since that POV is contrary to all the Beltway parasites and warlords that bilk the American public on these issues. |
