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before the middle of the next century - provided we set about devel–
oping the necessary technologies now. Sunlight is supplied by the
burning of hydrogen into helium in the sun's core. The sun's supply
of hydrogen should last for another five or six billion years.
The supply of uranium for breeder reactors would last only a
few thousand years. That would almost surely be long enough, how–
ever, because it is hard to imagine how the planet could remain
habitable for many millenia if breeder reactors, which manufacture
the stuff atom bombs are made of, were to become our staple source
of power. Thus nuclear power is a long-term option only in a rather
modest sense of "long term."
Solar power has other advantages over nuclear power as a long–
term option . Its technology is and would continue to be accessible to
the developing nations. Solar power sources are safe and produce no
poisonous byproducts. They would be widely dispersed rather than
concentrated in a few widely separated (and militarily indefensible)
sites . They would be managed and regulated mainly at individual
and community levels rather than at the federal level.
What about the short term? Since the oil crisis of 1973, several
groups of experts have made detailed estimates of the energy savings
that could be achieved with existing technologies . Their conclusions
are impressive. One such study is
A Low Energy Strategy jor the United
Kingdom
by Gerald Leach, Christopher Lewis, Ariane Van Buren,
Frederic Romig, and Gerald Foley (London: Science Reviews,
1979).
[The study
1
takes as its starting point the investigation of energy
use, and the multiplicity of changes and adaptations that might
reduce the amount of delivered energy required to provide a
service . Energy demand is broken down into some 400 separate
categories determined by end-use , fuels, and appliances. Projec–
tions of demand are then laboriously built up, "brick by brick ."
The conclusion? That gross national product could triple in the
United Kingdom in the fifty years 1975-2025, but that a series of
simple , known technical fixes could keep energy demand pretty
much where it was in 1975 .·
Projections of this kind must substantially underestimate the
increased efficiency that could result from fifty years of technological
'Robert Stobaugh and Daniel Yergin , eds.,
Energy Future
(New York: Random
House, 1979), p. 223 .
