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∂CSM Prof. J.L. Sweeney↓Engineering Economic Systems$$Your paper∞

	Thanks for your %2Energy Policy Issues for the Eighties%1
with which I mainly agree except for the following:

	1. We need to deal more realistically with non-economic
obstacles to energy development.  Consider oil shale.  Freeing
prices would cause oil shale to be produced in whatever amount
is economical in the America of the 1950s or earlier.  Just freeing
the market today might lead to no shale oil being produced -
unless the market freedom included that of bribing the Governor
of Colorado and enough legislators.  Someone must tell Governor
Lamm, "The amount is 4 million barrels per day, and the time is
as soon as possible".

	This can be reconciled with the desire to let market forces
determine prices and quantities only by relieving non-economic
constraints to an extent that much more than the required supply
of energy could be produced by all sources taken together.  Then
some will produce less than they are allowed to.

	2. You say, %2"However, the U.S. political system does not
seem to deal effectively with tradeoffs involving increased costs
borne now in order to avoid uncertain, although large,
costs several Congressional elections in the future"%1.  No doubt
there is an effect of this kind.  However, many of our troubles
can almost be described as the reverse.  The fears about nuclear
energy involve letting hypothetical risks cause foregoing present
benefits and so do other panics about the long term future.

	I think that understanding the political difficulties in
solving our energy problems cannot be achieved without detailed
analysis of the interaction of ideologies with each other and with
politics (regarded as the art of getting and keeping political
power).  The environmental movement must be studied in its
recruitment, claims on power, as a vehicle for advancement of
the "new class", etc.  I don't have an analysis with which I am
satisfied, but I don't think understanding can be achieved without
it.

	I also don't agree with Chauncey Starr's analysis which
attempts to account for the opposition to nuclear power by
hypothesizing that the public just naturally evaluates different
kinds of risk differently.