00100	THE ACADEMIC COMMUNITY AND THE NEXT ENERGY CRISIS
00200	
00300	
00400		The U.S. is headed for another energy crisis far worse
00500	than the last one.  The reason is that our domestic oil
00600	and natural gas on which we depend for 70% of our energy
00700	are rapidly being exhausted and we are not developing
00800	replacement energy fast enough.  The foreign sources on
00900	which we are increasingly dependent won't last very much
01000	longer either, and the present owners of these sources -
01100	developed by our technology and at our initiative and
01200	even mostly by our labor - have adopted a convenient
01300	ideology that blames us for all the world's troubles
01400	and will rob us ruthlessly the next time opportunity
01500	is combined with an excuse.
01600	What will trigger the crisis cannot be predicted any more
01700	than one can predict what minor ailment will kill off
01800	a person dying of old age.
01900	
02000		The crisis will cause a sudden drastic reduction
02100	in standard of living accompanied by much individual suffering
02200	and social turmoil as each group strives to avoid as much
02300	of the cost as it can.  After order is restored by the
02400	winner of the power struggle, the country will probably
02500	do what it should have been doing since well before 1973,
02600	and the energy problem will be solved but not easily.
02700	
02800		It would be better to solve it now, and it would
02900	have been still better to have started in 1973 at the time
03000	of the first energy crisis and better yet not to have lost
03100	our energy independence in the first place.  Had we started
03200	in 1973, energy independence by 1980 could have been achieved,
03300	and we can still achieve it relatively quickly if we develop
03400	our sources of energy intensively.  The reason we haven't
03500	is social and political.
03600	
03700		There is plenty of blame to go around as the saying goes,
03800	but as a professor, I would like to concentrate on that part of
03900	the blame that can be charged to the academic community -
04000	faculty and students - especially faculty in science and
04100	engineering.
04200	
04300		 Before doing that, let's consider what happened at
04400	the time of the last crisis.
04500	
04600		Two years ago  there was an energy crisis when the Arabs
04700	held up our oil for political reasons and to get more money.
04800	We and the other oil consuming countries, developed and
04900	undeveloped alike, gave in on the money.  The politics was
05000	compromised, because not all the oil producers are Arab,
05100	and because the Arabs sensibly decided not to push their
05200	luck.  We gave in on the prices, because we can after all
05300	afford to pay them, and because we could not unite to
05400	oppose them.  We could not unite to oppose them, because
05500	the left in the world considered opposing the U.S. more
05600	important than the prosperity of their peoples and
05700	because the left in the U.S. considered getting rid of
05800	Nixon and achieving a North 
05900	Vietnamese victory more important
06000	than the price of gasoline or resisting blackmail.
06100	However, at that time it seemed likely that we would
06200	at least embark on some kind of technological program
06300	to achieve energy independence.  For example, the house
06400	voted 361-19 to finally get started on the Alaska
06500	pipeline, but after this start everything else got
06600	bogged down in business and politics as usual.