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.cb WORLD ENERGY OPTIONS IN THE NEXT FIFTEEN YEARS


	The most interesting energy policy questions for the next fifteen
years are not what the United States will do, but what various other
countries will do.  We will assume that the United States continues the
present Carter energy policy for the next eight years, and this will
present the rest of the world with serious and interesting problems.  For
the first time since World War II, the United States will be
technologically passive, and if new ground is to be broken, others must do
it.

	We shall first characterize this policy (to its discredit),
then explain why the United States is likely to continue it in spite
of ill effects, discuss the situation in which various other countries
will find themselves, and then consider what their options are.

	The Carter policy is based on several ideas that dominate
the American intellectual community - including lawyers and government
officials, scientists and (to a lesser degree) engineers, college
and university professors and students, and teachers.
	This article is based on the probability that the main decisions
affecting world energy use in the next fifteen years will be made outside
the U.S. and that the main technical advances in nuclear energy will be
made outside the U.S.  This assumes that the U.S. will follow the Carter
energy policy regardless of its consequences for the U.S. and others.
The aspects of this policy important for the present discussion are
the following:
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	#. Abandonment of the breeder reactor and plutonium reprocessing.

	#. Making optimistic estimates of the availability of
popular forms of energy like geothermal, solar, wind, etc.

	#. A domestic production policy based on increasing price
controls and an increasing tendency for government to manage the
energy industry - without actually taking it over.

	#. Taking whatever may go wrong as a justification for further
controls.
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John McCarthy
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Computer Science Department
Stanford University
Stanford, California 94305

ARPANET: MCCARTHY@SU-AI
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