THE THIRD WAVE
Take, for example, the issue of energy.
With all the talk about an energy crisis in the countries transitioning into Third Wave civilization, it is often forgotten that First Wave societiesare facing an energy crisis of their own. Starting from an extremely low base, what kind of energy systems should they create?
Certainly they need big centralized fossil-fuel-based power plants of the Second Wave type. But in many of these societies, as the Indian scientist Amulya Kumar N. Reddy has shown, the most urgent need is for decentralized energy in the countryside rather than vast, centralized supplies for the cities.
The family of a landless Indian peasant now spends about six hours a day merely rinding the firewood it needs for cooking and heating.Another four to six hours are spent bringing water from a well, and asimilar amount to graze cattle, goats, or sheep. “Since such a family cannot afford to hire labour and cannot buy labour-saving gadgets, its only rational response is to have at least three children to satisfy its energy needs,” says Reddy, pointing out that rural energy “may prove an excellent contraceptive.”
Reddy has studied rural energy needs and concluded that the requirements of a village can easily be met by a tiny, cheap bio-gas plant that uses human and animal waste from the village itself. He has gone on to demonstrate that many thousands of such units would be far more useful, ecologically sound, and economical than a few giant, centralized generating plants.
Precisely this reasoning lies behind bio-gas research and installation programs hi countries from Bangladesh to Fiji. India already has 12,000 plants hi operation and has targeted for 100,000 units. China plans to have 200,000 family-si/e bio-gas plants at work in Szechuan. Korea has 29,450 and hopes to reach a total of 55,000 by 1985.
Just outside New Delhi, the prominent futurist writer ami businessman, Jagdish Kapur, has turned ten arid, miserably unproductive acres into a world-renowned model “solar farm” with a bio-gas plant. The farm now produces enouph grains, fruits, and vegetables to feed his family and employees as well as tons of food to sell at a profit to the m place.
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