THE THIRD WAVE
THE SUN AND BEYOND
In the earsplitting clamor over the energy crisis that has since followed,so many plans, proposals, arguments, and counterarguments have been hurled at us that it is difficult to make sensible choices.Governments are just as confused as the proverbial man in the street.
One way to cut through the murk is to look beyond the individual technologies and policies to the principles underlying them. Once we do, we find that certain proposals are designed to maintain or extend the Second Wave energy base as we have known it, while others rest on new principles. The result is a radical clarification of the entire energy issue.
The Second Wave energy base, we saw earlier, was premised on non-renewability; it drew from highly concentrated, exhaustible deposits; it relied on expensive, heavily centralized technologies; and it was nondiversified, resting on a relatively few sources and methods. These were the main features of the energy base in all Second Wave nations throughout the industrial era.
Bearing these in mind, if we now look at the various plans and proposals generated by the oil crisis we can quickly tell which ones are mere extensions of the old and which are forerunners of something fundamentally new. And the basic question becomes not whether oil should sell at forty dollars per barrel or whether a nuclear reactor should rise at Sea-brook or Grohnde. The Tar|ger^|pstinn is whether apy^ energy base designed for industrial society and premised on these Second Wave principles can survive. Once asked in frSTtoTfiT. the answer is inescapable.
Through the past half-century, fully two thirds of the entire world’s energy supply has come from oil and gas. Most observers today, from the most fanatic conservationists to the deposed Shah of Iran, from solar freaks and Saudi sheikhs to the button-down, briefcase-carrying experts of many governments, agree that this dependency on fossil fuel cannot continue indefinitely, no matter how many new oil fields are discovered.
Statistics vary. Disputes rage over how long the world has before the ultimate crunch. The forecasting complexities are enormous and many past predictions now look silly. Yet one thing is clear: no one is pumping gas and oil back into the earth to replenish the supply.
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