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00400	
00500									Janauary 3, 1973
00600	
00700	Editorial Staff
00800	\F1Science\F0 Magazine
00900	1515 Massachusetts Avenue
01000	Washington, D. C. 20005
01100	
01200	
01300	
01400	
01700	Dear Sirs:
01800	
01900	\J	Luther Carter's article \F1Enviromment: A Lesson for the People of
02000	Plenty\F0 illustrates an attitude towards the energy problem that should not
02100	go unchallenged.  To put it bluntly, Carter and the EPA officials he quotes
02200	approvingly - namely Quarles and Peterson - don't want to solve the energy
02300	problem; they want to use it to enforce "wholesome changes in life-styles."
02400	
02500		The difference can be illustrated by some quotes.  In his energy
02600	message of 25 November, President Nixon said, "As we look to the future,
02700	we can do so confident that the energy crisis will be resolved, not only
02800	for our time, but for all time.  We will once again have those plentiful
02900	supplies of inexpensive energy which helped build the greatest industrial
03000	nation and one of the highest standards of living in the world.  The capacity
03100	for self-sufficiency in energy is a great goal, and an essential goal.  We
03200	are going to achieve it."
03300	
03400		In contrast to this, Quarles, EPA's deputy administrator as quoted
03500	by Carter says, "We can face up to the bitter tasks of reordering our
03600	national economy and imposing discipline over our patterns of personal
03700	consumption.  Or we can maintain our pursuit of progress and, as in some
03800	wild form of pyramid game, continue with ever-more-frantic efforts to keep
03900	one jump ahead of the ultimate collapse."
04000	
04100		Well, who is right, Nixon or Quarles?  The pages of \F1Science\F0
04200	contain many articles proposing various means of solving the energy problem
04300	by getting a supply of energy sufficient to support several times our present
04400	rate of consumption for hundreds or thousands of years.  These proposals
04500	differ about what is the best way, but agree that the problem can
04600	be solved.  Most of them take it for granted that the problem should be
04700	solved.
04800	
04900		Carter's article is full of phrases like "to see the necessity
05000	of changing their profligate ways", "...modern advertising was necessary
05100	to make people want what they often did not need and to make consumption
05200	virtually an end in itself", and "But it is particularly in the use of the
05300	private automobile that the people of plenty have been truly reveling in
05400	extravagance."  This expresses his distaste for the life-styles Americans
05500	have chosen, but he does not, except by innuendo, say that the energy cannot
05600	be obtained to continue it.
05700	
05800		My own taste differs from Carter's and Quarles' and the enviromentalist
05900	spirit.  I like cars, and I think the present comfort of American life
06000	is an advance on previous hardship.  I think that the advantages of this
06100	life are wanted by even more people and that there are yet further advances
06200	to be made, and some of these will require additional use of energy.  Moreoveer,
06300	I think the energy can be had at an acceptable environmental cost.
06400	
06500		It seems to me that Carter and the EPA officials such as Quarles and
06600	Peterson have not been honest.  They have exaggerated environmental dangers
06700	and the difficulty of getting more energy, because they would like us to
06800	live differently for quite different and still unstated reasons.
06900	This tactic has been successful in getting rigid environmental laws passed,
07000	and has succeeded in stalling many measures for getting more energy, but, as
07100	the 360-14 and 80-5 vote on the pipeline showed, they cannot get us to
07200	change our life-styles without really convincing us the changes are desirable
07300	or necessary.  Unless this happens, we'll stick with Nixon.\.
07400	
07500	
07600	
07700										John McCarthy
07800	
07900	
08000	\F1Computer Science Department
08100	Stanford University
08200	Stanford, California 94305