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\F2\CSTANFORD ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LABORATORY
\CDEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
\CSTANFORD UNIVERSITY
\CSTANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305
\F0


							October 2, 1974

Dr. Seb Doniach
W. W. Hansen Laboratories of Physics
Stanford University

Dear Seb,

\J	I also have read Heilbronner's book.  However, I was
not favorably impressed.  It seems to me that there is too
much space between the two horns of his dilemma for it to be
one of humanity's major problems.  The U.S. with 6% of the
world's population uses 30% of the energy, so that to bring
the world to U.S. energy consumption levels a fivefold increase
is required.  Assume further that the population increases by
a factor of four before it is stabilized.  (Remember that the
proposed statement of optimism assumes population control and
no nuclear war.)  Assume further that the per capita consumption
of energy goes up by a further factor of five beyond present
U.S. levels.  Then the total energy consumption goes up by a
factor of 100 which is still a factor of 150 below equaling
the energy received from the sun.

	Now the second horn of Heilbronner's dilemma is that the
underdeveloped nations in despair over their poverty will attack
us.  If there is really to be little space between the horns, it
would seem to mean that when the rest of the world has reached
five times the present U.S. level of energy consumption it would
be in despair because we were a further factor of five ahead.
This is the despair of the rich at the super-rich, and I don't
believe it.

	The idea that we might reach the earth's heat handling
limit in 250 years or whatever is based on projecting an
exponential growth into the future.  It seems to me that this
is highly unlikely, because the present applications of energy
will saturate at a small multiple of the present U.S. consumption.
Consider that registered cars have increased from 30 million to
100 million since World War II while the population has grown
by no more than 30% if that.  It is hard to see how another factor
of even two in per capita use of cars is possible.  As another
example, consider that between 1950 and 1965 the number of
households in the U.S. went up by 26% while the population went
up by 15% with a corresponding increase in energy requirements.
Presumably this is due to children moving out on their parents
earlier, old people staying independent and an increase in divorce.
All these will saturate long before there is a household for each
person.  The large commercial growth has to saturate or there won't
be enough clerks to man the stores.  The largest single demand for
energy that is far from saturation from central air-conditioning
in homes.  Another possibility is that through a shortage of
natural or synthetic gas or to avoid generating oxides of nitrogen,
we go entirely to electric heat and suffer the inefficiency of
electric generation.  To make my favorite analogy, no-one predicted
from the increase in cattle in the U.S. between 1860 and 1880 that
each American would eat a cow a day by 1940.  Of course, there may
appear large new applications for energy whose cost-effectiveness
would have to be evaluated, but it is interesting that all the
present large energy consuming activities have been around for
50 years and are just beginning to approach saturation.

	Heilbronner is somewhat of a straw man because of his
total aversion to arithmetic (I have noted it in some of his
other writings.), and there are much harder questions to answer
in order to completely justify technological optimism, like, where
is all this energy to come from.

	I have really done a lot of thinking about the matter,
and I wouldn't have proposed the statement had I not thought that
many others had also thought about it and reached similar
conclusions.  This seems to be mistaken; while all the engineers
who have replied so far have assented to the idea of the statement
in general, all the scientists have been much more doubtful though
no-one so far has expressed a firm contrary belief.
Perhaps the engineers have thought more about it, or perhaps
are just more optimistic by nature in the present cultural
climate.  Therefore, I
believe that the meeting when held should not presume the
conclusion.  Instead, the basis for attendance should be a belief
that the problem is worth considering and a willingness to help
provide the public reassurance if convinced that reassurance is
justified.

	I am interested in the learning more about the force of
various arguments, and therefore I am curious whether you think
the above refutes Heilbronner's dilemma, agreeing that it is
not a sufficient case for technological optimism in general or
even concerning energy in particular, but simply a refutation
of Heilbronner's particular case for pessimism.\.


							Sincerely yours,



							John McCarthy