THE COMMANDING HEIGHTS
In this war of ideas and money that is already raging in all the high-technology nations, it is possible to discern not two but three antagonists. To begin with, there are those with vested interests in the old, Second Wave energy base. They call for conventional energy sources and technologies — coal, oil, gas, nuclear power, and their various permutations. They fight, in effect, for an extension of the Second Wave status quo. And because they are entrenched in the oil companies, utilities, nuclear commissions, mining corporations, and their associated trade unions, the Second Wave forces seem unassailably in charge.
By contrast, those who favor the advance to a Third Wave energy base—a combination of consumers, environmentalists, scientists, and entrepreneurs in the leading-edge industries, along with their various allies — seem scattered, underfinanced, and often politically inept. Second Wave propagandists regularly picture them as naive, unconcerned with dollar realities, and bedazzled by blue-sky technology.
Worse yet, the Third Wave advocates are publicly confused with a vocal fringe of what might best be termed First Wave forces — people who call not for an advance to a new, more intelligent, sustainable, and scientifically based energy system, but for a reversion to preindustrial past. In extreme form, their policies would eliminate most technology, restrict mobility, cause cities to shrivel and die, and impose an ascetic culture in the name of conservation.
By lumping these two groups together the Second Wave lobbyists, public relations experts, and politicians deepen the public confusion and keep the Third Wave forces on the defensive.
Nevertheless, supporters of neither First nor Second Wave policies can win in the end. The former are devoted to a fantasy, and the latter are attempting to maintain an energy base whose problems are intractable—in fact, insuperable.
The relentlessly rising cost of Second Wave fuels works strongly against the Second Wave interests. The skyrocketing capital cost of Second Wave energy technologies works against them. The fact that Second Wave methods often require heavy inputs of energy to eke out relatively small increments of new “net” energy works against them.The escalating problems of pollution work against them. The nuclear risk works against them. The willingness of thousands in many countries to battle the police in order to stop nuclear reactors or strip mines or giant generating plants works njviinst them. The tremendous rising thirst of the non-industrial world for energy of its own, and for higher prices for its resources, works against them.
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