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The argument leading to these conclusions is simple in outline .
Domestic and foreign reserves of oil and natural gas are running
out. Demand , however, is rising and will continue to rise at least
until the turn of the century. Conservation and solar power can
reduce but not fill the resulting gap . Hence we shall have to rely
heavily on coal and nuclear power.
Those who dissent from this conclusion attack the argument at
two points. First, the conventional estimates of our energy needs
which Bethe accepts, the critics say are much too high. Secondly, the
critics claim that small-scale solar power projects, supplemented by
a modest increase in the use of coal under strict environmental safe–
guards , can make up for the declining production of oil and natural
gas, and that they can do so more economically than nuclear power
plants.
Whose arithmetic is right? Even asking this question may seem
naive . Surely the disagreement over arithemtic springs from more
basic disagreements about needs and lifestyles and about the practi–
cality of significant social and political changes? There is some truth
in this assertion. Believers in Jeffersonian democracy usually find
small-scale solar power more attractive than strip mining and
nuclear fission. But the choice is not between hard scientific realism
and soft Jeffersonian idealism. There is more than one scientific
perspective.
When a biological population enters a new, unoccupied ecologi–
cal niche, it increases rapidly in size.
It
may also acquire, through
the process of natural selection, new biological traits specifically
adapted to the opportunities and challenges of the new environment.
Cultural evolution resembles biological evolution in these respects ,
though of course it is much faster. The ways we "make" and use
energy, along with many other aspects of our economic , social, and
political life, are very recent evolutionary adaptations to a cheap ,
abundant supply of oil and natural gas. That aspect of our environ–
ment is now changing. Technologies and socioeconomic patterns
that were once adaptive are rapidly becoming maladaptive.
If
our
culture is to survive, it must acquire a new set of adaptations.
In the long run we must derive most of our power either from
uranium burned in breeder reactors or from sunlight. Although
some knowledgeable people have been skeptical about the
short-term
prospects for using sunlight to make up the energy deficit, there
seems to be a consensus among those who have studied the question
that sunlight and its derivatives could supply our energy needs
