Marketing executive’s column insults energy expert’s advice

Editor,

For quite some time now, it’s been the case that the best use for the op-ed page of the “Daily Lobo” is in the tray of the parakeet cage, but I must say that this time the editors have dredged new depths.
I am referring to the recent John Walker column.

There is an old joke in engineering circles (people who must work with the world as it actually exists) that there are no engineering problems, only marketing solutions.

Walker, a marketing executive whose chosen profession is not reality-based but functions instead to warp people’s perception of reality for the purpose of extracting cash, apparently considers himself something of an authority on everything — energy, environment, criminal and health systems, to name but a few.  

His positions, however, are not those of a Renaissance man but rather those of a 12th century mind.

For brevity, I will address just one statement from his well-splattered canvas, where he suggests firing the current energy secretary, Steven Chu.
Walker, a peddler, has nothing but contempt for Dr. Chu’s scientific understanding. Chu is a Nobel Prize winner in physics who works for the Department of Energy. Heaven forbid that we cloud U.S. energy policy with facts or confuse it with the reasoning of one of the finest minds on the planet. There’s marketing to be done for the extractive fuel industries, and since Chu is dealing with the reality of energy generation and consumption, we are instructed to dismiss him.

As a shill for the something-for-nothing crowd, Walker would have us believe his drivel about how we can all have unicorns and rainbows for free — an approach that works quite well in marketing.

China, however, offers sterling real-world examples of the end result of unregulated energy production, where pollution-caused cancer is the leading cause of death. Perhaps 1 percent of city dwellers have air that’s fit to breathe, according to that commie organization, the World Bank.

There was a time, not too long ago, when the “Daily Lobo” could at least occasionally pass muster as a university paper. Perhaps a name change is in order — something along the line of the “Daily Cracker.”
It’d be better marketing.

Ronald Kay
UNM research engineer

Editor’s Note: The Daily Lobo discourages the paper’s use as parakeets’ bedding, but heartily recommends it as packing material, and perhaps, for reading.