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

288National Energy Securitythe houses in Pasadena, California had solar water heaters in 1897, 80 and overthe years, Americans have used a cumulative total of some six million windmachines.) The extensions and modifications that would improve the devicesare of a modest character: although interesting to technologists, they areunlikely to present any substantive engineering problems. And the enormousdiversity of the technologies and of the policy instruments that can be used toimplement them provides many fallback routes to reach the same goals.In contrast, it is conventional energy supply technologies whose successhangs on adventurous extensions of the present engineering art into whollyunchartered regions where success is far from certain—the conditions of stormyseas, the Arctic, fast-neutron fluxes, shale mining, corrosive hot brines, synfuelprocessing, outer-space industrialization. It is those same technologies that mustovercome formidable sociopolitical obstacles against even longer odds. And it isagain those same technologies which stake the energy future on technical,social, and economic breakthroughs far surpassing anything yet experienced.Those who advocate even greater reliance on such technologies have alreadybrought us the greatest collapse in industrial history: a nuclear enterprise which,after the investment of enormous technical effort and hundreds of billions of dollars,finds itself with no vendor in the world that has made a profit on reactorsales; with at least seventy more reactors cancelled than ordered in the U.S. since1974; with a similar collapse of prospects throughout the world’s marketeconomies; 81 and with America’s second-largest reactor vendor (GeneralElectric)—expecting no more U.S. sales for at least the rest of the 1980s and essentiallyno export market—withdrawing from the market once it has filled its backorders. 82 This unhappy episode underscores the risks of underestimating thechallenges of “big engineering,” 83 assuming that capital markets will indefinitelyignore the bottom line, and neglecting the social realities that make it considerablymore difficult to achieve a plutonium economy than to insulate houses. Itmay at first glance appear that the “hard” technologies require merely continuingto do as one has previously done, while the alternatives require striking outinto new territory. A pragmatic assessment of what is actually working, however,tells the opposite story. The contrast between one set of technologies, failingto meet the test of the marketplace despite direct federal subsidies exceeding fortybillion of today’s dollars, 84 and the other, capturing the market despite discriminatoryinstitutional barriers, could not be more complete. Efficiency and renewablesare not only the line of least resistance but also the policy of least risk.Built-in resilienceAll the economic and other advantages of appropriate renewable sourcesdescribed in the past five pages have left out of account their most important