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								Janauary 3, 1973

Editorial Staff
\F1Science\F0 Magazine
1515 Massachusetts Avenue
Washington, D. C. 20005



Dear Sirs:

\J	Luther Carter's article \F1Enviromment: A Lesson for the People of
Plenty\F0 illustrates an attitude towards the energy problem that should not
go unchallenged.  To put it bluntly, Carter and the EPA officials he quotes
approvingly - namely Quarles and Peterson - don't want to solve the energy
problem; they want to use it to enforce "wholesome changes in life-styles."

	The difference can be illustrated by some quotes.  In his energy
message of 25 November, President Nixon said, "As we look to the future,
we can do so confident that the energy crisis will be resolved, not only
for our time, but for all time.  We will once again have those plentiful
supplies of inexpensive energy which helped build the greatest industrial
nation and one of the highest standards of living in the world.  The capacity
for self-sufficiency in energy is a great goal, and an essential goal.  We
are going to achieve it."

	In contrast to this, Quarles, EPA's deputy administrator as quoted
by Carter says, "We can face up to the bitter tasks of reordering our
national economy and imposing discipline over our patterns of personal
consumption.  Or we can maintain our pursuit of progress and, as in some
wild form of pyramid game, continue with ever-more-frantic efforts to keep
one jump ahead of the ultimate collapse."

	Well, who is right, Nixon or Quarles?  The pages of \F1Science\F0
contain many articles proposing various means of solving the energy problem
by getting a supply of energy sufficient to support several times our present
rate of consumption for hundreds or thousands of years.  These proposals
differ about what is the best way, but agree that the problem can
be solved.  Most of them take it for granted that the problem should be
solved.

	Carter's article is full of phrases like "to see the necessity
of changing their profligate ways", "...modern advertising was necessary
to make people want what they often did not need and to make consumption
virtually an end in itself", and "But it is particularly in the use of the
private automobile that the people of plenty have been truly reveling in
extravagance."  This expresses his distaste for the life-styles Americans
have chosen, but he does not, except by innuendo, say that the energy cannot
be obtained to continue it.

	My own taste differs from Carter's and Quarles' and the enviromentalist
spirit.  I like cars, and I think the present comfort of American life
is an advance on previous hardship.  I think that the advantages of this
life are wanted by even more people and that there are yet further advances
to be made, and some of these will require additional use of energy.  Moreoveer,
I think the energy can be had at an acceptable environmental cost.

	It seems to me that Carter and the EPA officials such as Quarles and
Peterson have not been honest.  They have exaggerated environmental dangers
and the difficulty of getting more energy, because they would like us to
live differently for quite different and still unstated reasons.
This tactic has been successful in getting rigid environmental laws passed,
and has succeeded in stalling many measures for getting more energy, but, as
the 360-14 and 80-5 vote on the pipeline showed, they cannot get us to
change our life-styles without really convincing us the changes are desirable
or necessary.  Unless this happens, we'll stick with Nixon.\.



									John McCarthy


\F1Computer Science Department
Stanford University
Stanford, California 94305