Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

Chapter Sixteen: Inherently Resilient Energy Supplies 287tries. U.S. security would be directly served by helping to relieve dangerousfrustrations in the Third World: a defensible America “specializes not in armingor controlling other nations, but in equipping them with the benign technologiesthat foster stability and self-reliance.” 75Similar arguments apply within American society itself. Technologies whichtend to improve distributional equity, which are equally available to persons ofall income levels, which increase individual and community self-reliance andself-esteem, and which by their appropriate scale allocate energy and its sideeffects more equitably will all tend to reduce the tensions now leading to “energywars” (Chapter Four). Technologies which are perceived to be relativelybenign, whose impacts are directly sensible and understandable by ordinarypeople, and which are accessible to an accountable and locally responsive politicalprocess 76 would increase the likelihood that political conflicts over energypolicy would be settled peacefully. And technologies which can be evolved,refined, and selected largely by the processes of the marketplace, rather thanby the technocratic mandate of an Energy Security Corporation and an EnergyMobilization Board, 77 are more likely not only to respect our national pluralismand diversity but also to use national resources efficiently. To see the dangersof central crash programs one need look no further than the experienceof World War II, when the War Production Board, despite great talent andeffort, mandated industrial expansions and conversions “which we could notuse and did not need,” 78 diverting precious resources from other uses wherethey were more urgently needed and failing to use efficiently the considerablecapacities of many small manufacturers. 79Large, complex technologies built and run by equally large, complex institutionsare “inaccessible.” They reinforce the supposition that ordinary peopleshould be mere passive clients of remote technocracies. This in turn encouragespeople to think that if energy supplies are disrupted, “the Government”will take care of it. A basic conclusion of this book, however, is that if energypreparedness is to become a reality, people must feel empowered to use theirown skills, solve their own problems, and largely look after themselves. Thisrequires in turn that they have, and know that they have, most of the technologicalmeans to do so. The technology and the psychology of self-relianceare two sides of the same coin.A final consideration important for policy, though difficult to quantify, is therisk of technological failure. It is sometimes suggested that efficiency improvementsand soft technologies are uncertain to succeed, and that reliance on themis therefore a risky gamble. On the contrary, such technologies are known towork. (They more often embody the technological principles of the 1890s thanof the 1990s, albeit in up-to-date and much improved form. Nearly a third of