New trends in physics teaching, v.4; The ... - unesdoc - Unesco

The energy crisis
of use are irrelevant. When they are offered as reassurance of the lack of severity of our energy
problem, they can seem to be dangerously and irresponsibly misleading.
Students should be able to evaluate the same author’s statement about coal: ‘At least 220
billion tons of immediately recoverable coal awaits mining in the United States.’ This ‘could
supply our energy needs for several centuries.’
Students can see that the size of the coal reserves given by the author is smaller than either
of the two estimates given by Hubbert. They can see that it is imprecise and meaningless to
suggest how long a resource wil last if one says nothing about the rate of growth of production.
In addition to encouraging our students to carry out their responsibility to analyse what they
read, we must encourage them to recognize the callous (and probably careless) inhumanity of a
prominent person who is perhaps in his fifties [ 181, offering reassurance to younger readers to
the effect, ‘don’t worry, we have enough petroleum to last into the next century’. The writer
is saying that ‘There is no need for you to worry, for there is enough petroleum for the rest of
my life’. Can we accept the urgings of those who advocate unending expansion and growth in
the rates of consumption of our fossil fuels and who say Why worry, we have enough to last
into the next century’?
We must give our students an appreciation of the critical urgency of evaluating the vague,
imprecise and meaningless statements that characterize so much of the public debate on the
energy problem. The great benefits of the free press place on each individual the awesome responsibility
of evaluating the things that he or she reads. Students of science and engineering have
special responsibilities in the energy debate because the problems are quantitative and therefore
many of the questions can be evaluated by simple analysis.
Speaking recently, Dr. Hubbert noted that we do not have an energy crisis, we have an energy
shortage. He then observed that the energy shortage has produced a cultural crisis.
We must emphasize to our students that they have a very special role to play in our society, a
role that follows directly from their analytical abilities. It is their responsibility (and ours) to
become great humanists.
Acknowledgements
A great deal of correspondence and hundreds of conversations with dozens of people over six
years have yielded many ideas, suggestions and facts which I have incorporated here. I offer
my sincere thanks to all who have helped. I am deeply indebted to E.J. Wenham for his work
and patience in preparing this manuscript for publication.
35