COMMENT ⊗   VALID 00002 PAGES
C REC  PAGE   DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00002 00002	.require "let.pub[let,jmc]" source
C00011 ENDMK
C⊗;
.require "let.pub[let,jmc]" source;
∂AIL Editor:↓%2New York Times%1↓229 West 43d St.↓N.Y. 10036∞
.turn on "→";
To the Editor:

	David Donald, the Warren Professor of American History
at Harvard, tells us (op. ed. September 8 1977) that American
history is irrelevant, because

	%2"Now the age of abundance has ended.  The people of plenty
have become the people of paucity.  Our stores of oil and natural
gas are rapidly running out, and other natural resources will soon
be exhausted.  If we save what is left, we choke our economy; if we
use it, we impoverish our posterity."%1

	On the same page we have an advertisement from the Mobil Oil
Company stating

	%3"We urge that the national energy debate focus on the
paramount issue: development vs. non-development of U.S. energy
supplies.  We believe that any adverse social and economic
consequences of development are being grossly %2overestimated%3
by many in Washington and that the adverse social and economic
consequences of non-development are being grossly %2underestimated"%1

	The professor and the oil company are not arguing about precisely
the same point, but I would like to explain why I think the oil company
is, on the whole, right, and my fellow professor is, on the whole,
mistaken.  Moreover, in my view, the oil company has cogently argued for its
view in a series of advertisements, while the professor offers only
a word picture that assumes what it must prove and relies for effect
on derogatory phrases like "people of plenty".
I realize that for many readers, it is not respectable to take seriously
an argument presented by a company in an advertisement, especially when
it disagrees with a professor.  Sorry about that, but honesty requires
evaluating an argument on its merits, regardless of its source.

	I maintain that American resources are adequate to maintain several
times the American population at several times the present material
prosperity for many hundreds of millions of years.  This estimate
does not assume the discovery of new scientific phenomena on which
technology can be based.
It also assumes that our
descendants in the next thousand years will make at least as much
progress as we have made in the last hundred and that our society
will permit these advances to be made and used.

	Many thousands of different materials are used in our economy,
and a full demonstration that our descendants can get by would be
very long.  Moreover, while short range problems have received much
study, there hasn't been much incentive to work out long range solutions,
on the sensible grounds that our distant descendants will have about
as much interest in our opinions as we would have in Miles Standish's
opinion of how the 20th century would solve its firewood problem.
It is only now that unsupported gloomy views about our future supplies
of materials begin to affect our present behavior, e.g. affect Professor
Donald's decision about whether to teach American history straight or
to depict it as aimed at a tragic future.

	Nevertheless, we can divide the problem into four main parts:
energy, minerals, food and pollution, leaving aside population control
which Professor Donald doesn't address either.  To put the energy problem
simply: the fast breeder reactor can keep us supplied with energy
for hundreds of millions of years, because it multiplies our uranium
supply by 70, allows the use of the even more abundant thorium, and
makes low grade ore economical.  After some tens of thousands of years,
our descendants will have to use rather low grade ores, but it is
hard to believe they can't solve that problem.  The fact that the breeder
reactor can solve the problem doesn't show that it is the best
solution, but it is surely better than letting our civilization decay.

	Hundreds of minerals are used in our civilization, but the main
metals are iron and aluminum.  At present we use rather high grade ores,
and it is cheaper to import high grade ores from a great distance than
to use low grade domestic ores.  However, iron is five percent of the
earth's crust and aluminum is eight percent.  Our descendants will have
to figure out how to use very low grade ores, but it is comforting to
know that they will have a comfortable economic margin to work on.
Namely, the extraction of minerals including those used for energy accounts
for less than ten percent of our GNP.  We would preserve our civilization
even if we had to put fifty percent into mineral extraction, but actually
the productivity of mineral extraction responds well to large scale
machinery, and we can expect our descendants to be even better at machinery
than we are.

	Professor Donald has allowed himself to be panicked by rumors.
Why he and others so much want to believe that civilization is doomed is
the great unknown of our time.  If the professors and lawyers and judges
and journalists of a free society lose all will to make it survive, then
the unfree societies will come to dominate the world, because they, at
least, don't suffer from this disease.