ing to practical and ideological convenience, from such an enormous armamentarium that the choice can fully respect pluralism and volun~ tarism. ~ * . ~ I do not see how the same pluralism can possibly extend to a hard, coarse-grained energy path. The scale and the technical difficulty of its enterprises are so vast that corresponding concentrations of social resources must be efficiently mobilized without substantive regard to diverse opinions and circumstances. Only large corporations, encouraged by large government agencies, using large sums of private and public money to employ large numbers of workers on large areas of land, can possibly get the job done. It is not a task for householders, small businesses, block associations or town meetings. Soft technologies are thus inherently, structurally less coercive and more participatory than hard technologies. In a nuclear society, nobody can opt out of nuclear risk. .In an electrified society, everyone's lifestyle is shaped by the economic impetatives of the energy system, and, from the viewpoint of the consumer, diversity becomes a vanishing luxury. Like purchasers of model T Fords, the consumer can have anything he wants so long as it's e)ectrified. But in a soft path, each ' person can choose his own risk-benefit balance and his own energy ·systems to match his own degree of caution and involvement. People who do not care to partake of the advantag.:s of district heating will be free to reject them-and, if the system if thoughtfully designed, to change their minds later. People who want to drive big cars or inhabit uninsulated houses will be free to 'do so-and to pay the social costs. People can choose to live in city centers, remote countryside, or in between, without being told their lifestyle is uneconomic. People can choose to minimize their "consumer humiliation"-their forced dependence on systems they cim!'lot understand, contro!•. diagno~e1 . repair, or modify-or can co.ntmue to ?epend on trad1t1~mal u~ll1t1es, for large grids are already With· u~ and m so~e de~ee Will pe;s1st for ~ long time. In a soft path, then, dissent and d1vers1ty are not JUSt a futile gesture but a basis for political action' and a spur t<;> private. enterprise. But the monolithic nature, gargantuan scale, exactmg requirements, and homogenizing infrastructure of hard technologies does.not offer such pluralism. Only our largest conglomerations of resources, shielded by the poweres of the state from tq_e vagaries of the economic and political marketplace, can perform ~ch demanding tasks. ·n .... · Centralized energy systems are also inequitable in principle because they separate the energy output from its side-effects, allocating them to different people at opposite ends of the transmission lines, pipelines, or rail lines. The export of these side-effects from Los Angeles and New York to Navajo country, Appalachia, 1 Wyoming, and the Brooks Range (not to mention Venezuela, the Caribbean, Kuwait, and British Columbia) makes the former more habitable and the latter more resentful. That resentment is finding political expression. As the weakest groups in society, such as the native peoples, come to appear to stronger groups as miners' canaries whose fate f9retells their own, sympathy for the recipients of the exported side-effects grows. December 1976 RAIN Page 5 Throughout the world, cent:rc.Lgovernment is trying to promote expansionist energy policies by preempting regulatory auth'ority, and in the proceS's is ·eliciting a strong Sta,te (or Provincial) and local response. Washington, Ottawa, Bonn, Pads, and Auckland are coming to be viewed locally as the common enemy. Unholy alliances form. Perhaps Montana might mutter to Mass'achusetts, "We won't oil your beac~es if you won't strip our coal." As Congress-made of State people With no Federal constituency-increasingly molds interregional conflict into a cemmon States'-rights front, dec~sions gravitate by default to the lower political levels at which consensu,s is still .P?~sible: At those. levels, further insults to local autonom)l by remote utlht1es, ml compames, banks, and Federal agencies are 'intolerable. Thus people in. Washi~gton sit drawing reactors and coalplexes on maps, but the exerc1se has mcreasingly an air of unreality because it is overtaken by political events at the grassroots. The greater the Federal preemption (as in offshore oil leasing), the greater the homeostatic State'response. The more the Federal authorities treat centrifugal politics as a public-relations problem, the more likely it becomes that they will not ~:mly fail to g~t. their facilities sited, but will also in the process destroy the•r own legltlmacy. To some extent this has already occurred, and I have no doubt that States will soon gain a veto power, at least, over nuclear facilitie~ in their jurisdiction (as current Federal legislation proposes). On th1s issue, as in other spheres, the traditional linear right-left political spectrum seems to become cyclic as differently grounded distastes for big government merge 'across gaps of rhetoric. The res~rgency of indivi-dual, decentralized ·citizen effort in politics, as in private life and career, seems to me an important political universal in most industrial nations today. Big Brother does not like losinghis grip. Only last year, for example, some Federal officials were speculating that they might have to s~~k central regulation of domestic solar technologies, lest mass defections from utility grids damage utility cash-flows and the State and municipal budgets dependent on utility tax revenues. Since utilities are perceived as having too much power and utility regulators too little sensitivity already, a surer recipe for grassroots revolt would be hard to imagine. I think perceptions of the value of dependence on utilities are shifting rapidly as the ehterprise reaches such a size that'it starts to ·intrude on life in many traditionally "sa:fe" areas, as in Ontario., 0r as its vulnerability becomes painfully manifest, as in England, or as general political consciousness rises in step with utility bills. The disillusionment and resentment I see in many industrial countries is akin, perhaps, -to that of a citizen of a poor country who is realizing that an energy technology predicted to bring him self-reliance, pride, and the development of his village has actually brought him dependence, a cargo-cult mentality, and the enri~hment of urban elites. I believe the recent shift.of institutional and individual investment away from utilities reflects not only concern with debt structure and interest coverage but also, more fundamentally, with gradual withdrawal of legitimacy by a fickle public that has already done the same to oil majors; I- .· .. believe further that the grounds of this shift among a previously tolerant, even supportiye public are structural, arise essentially from ~uspicion of centrism, and would not be reversed by nationalization or rechartering that ignored scale. It is perhaps encouraging, then, that the concept of a soft energy path brings a broad convergence which, even as it coincides with many pre-existing strands of social change, cuts across traditional lines of political conflict. It offers a potential argument for every constituency: civil rights for liberals, States' rights for conserv~tives, availability of capital for businesspeople, environmental protection for conservationists, old values for the old, new values for the young, exciting technologies for the secular, spiritual rebirth for the religious. As we realiz~. that when_we have come to the edge of an abyss,.the only progressive move we can make is to step backwards, we begin to see that we can instead turn around and then step forwards, and that the turning around-the transition to a future unlike anything we have ever known-will be supremely interesting, an unprecedented central project for our,species. Faust, having made a bad bargain by not reading the fine print and so brought disaster on. the innocent bystanders (Gretchen's family), was eventually redeemed and accepted in heaven because he' changed his career, rec:levoting his talents to bringing soft technologies to the rural villagc:rs. That choice of "the road less travelled by" made all the difference to him; and so it can to us. For underlying the stru~tural differences between the soft and hard paths is a difference of perceptions about mankind and his works. Some people, impressed and fascinated-by the glittering achievements of technology, say that if we will only have faith in human ingenuity (theirs) we shall witness the Second Coming of Prometheus (if we have yet recovered from the First), bringing us undreamed-of tyrannies and perils; and that ~ven if we had a clean and unlimited energy source, we would lack the' 'discipline to use it wisely. Such people are really saying, firstly, that energy
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