PagelO RAIN June1981 Dispersed, Decentralized, and Renewable Energy Resources: Alternatives to NatiD/.al Vulnerability and War, by the Energy and Defense Project, 1980, 340pp., free from: Environmental Policy Institute 317 Pennsylvania Ave. Washington, DC 20003 Increased use of dispersed energy sources, and a trarlsition to renewable energy sources In the irldustrial, agricultural, commercial, and residential sectors would ultimately relIult in independence from foreign energy sources. In addition, thevulllerability of the centraliz.ed energy system, dependent on a limited number 01 facilities, would be substantIally reduced. With a nuclear cowboy in the White House and a hint of apocalypse in the air, the s urity of America's energy supply has beome an important consideration. Acting on a request by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Energy and Defense Project has made a strong case for an energy future that is reliant on locally based renewable sources. EssenriaIJy, this very timely report is a series of capsu Ie descriptions of the some- times bewildering array of issues and technologies that are a part of creating a secure energy suppJy. The discussion covers a lot of territory, ranging from World War II to Armageddon, and from time-oF-day electrical rates to solar satellites. Most of the summarIes are exceUeht, and this study is very useful as a reference text on energy issues in general, as well as energy security in particular. The description of synfuels r chnology, for example, is an exceptionally clear su rvey of the subject. Along with a discussion of conventional and renewable energy options, the report includes a number of historical precedents and future possibilities with some chilling implications. A single ICBM, for example, detonated 248 miles (400 km) above the continental United States could create an electromagnetic pulse that would severely damage power and communications grids and obliterate computer memory banks nationwide. The last section of the study presents a series of priorities and recommerrdations for enhancing energy security. Sketchy at best, it ser es more as a b3sis for further discussion than as a definitive sratement. But the issues being discussed here cut across many political boundaries, and the urgency of that dIscussion increases with each passing month . The argument th3t renewable energy is a good idea from a national security standpoint has bee.n.kicking around for a few years now, and has been repeated by a number of renewable energy advocates. There are indications that that argument i5 beginning to be taken seriously by the military establishment. The acceptance of r newable energy for strategic reasons, combined with the increasing commercialization and control of con serva tJon and solar technolOgies by corporations that ar often diametrically opposed to the vision of a SOciety based on self-reliance and cooperation, raises the grim possiblity of a future renewable energy society which has lost sight of the fundamental issues raised by the concept of appropriate technology. How much are we willing to give up for a solar future? It should be an interesting debate. -KB Strategic Solar: The Renewable War Debate by Tom Alhanasiou Solar power offers something for everybody, except possibly oil company executives. The last few years have seen the dimming of its radical aura, as claSSically conservative goals like "rebuilding America" and reducing the balance of payments deficit have been recruited into the promotion of soft energy paths. Now, thanks to a new report directed by longtime alternative energy activist Wilson Clark, the solar bandwagon is getting even more crowded-and the tolerant ambience on board is getting somewhat strained. Dispersed, Decentralized and Renewable Energy SOllrees: Alternatives to National Vulnerability and War is a pitch for a solar solution delivered in the terms of national security. To the missile gap, the MIRV gap, the SLBM gap and the bomber gap, Clark has added the sunshine gap. The major findings of Energy, V.ulnerability, War are simple and compelling: "l)Current US energy systems (fuels and electricity) are highly vulnerable, due to requirements for imported resources and due to the centralized nature of the systems themselves. 2)Dispersed, decentralized and renewable energy sources can reduce nationll vulnerability and the likelihood of war by substitutuing for vulnerable centralized resources." These claims are almost certainly true. The Pentagon seems to think so-it started substituting photovoltaics for diesel generators in remote locations a few years ago, and the MX, if it is installed as a land based system, will be largely powered by the wind and the sun. Clark has merely taken the most common fare of the appropriate technology movement-resilience, local self-reliance, decentralization- and incorporated it into the logic of strategic planning But the safe energy movement would do well to evaluate the politics implicit in this argument, its unflinching pragmatism and the servility with which it addresses onl those aspects of the arms race which suit its purposes. Clark wants to recruit military plannerS into the solar energy coalition, and to do so he is more than willing to situate his technical discussions within the specter of "the Russian threat" and to ignore the dynamics of nuclear escalation. Clark cannot have missed the substantial bod of data and analysis indicating that it is the U. S. which has consi tently been responsible for escalating the arms race- that it ha a long-term offensive nuclear strategy, and that it is in terms of this strategy that all civil "defense" programs must bl' seen Unfortunately, political realities like these are out of the scope of his report. There is nothing whatsoever here that would be even remotely embarrassing to the men Clark hopes to sway, for his strategy is quite simply to gain a hearing by saying only what the language of power allows. We may be permitted some doubt that this approach will avert catastrophe, or even, as Clark seems to think, undermine some of the deeper forces pushing us towards war. He is correct when he points to the dependency on "strategic' materials that high tech energy production engenders. But the coming war, when it arrives, will have more causes than simply the need of the empire for Persian Gulf oil and South Afncan beryllium. A conversion to a decentralized economy less dependent on the pillage of the Third World will, in itself, do little to avert the logic of militarism, or to undermine the economic and political dynamics of global domination. As for Clark's program for solar civil defense, it is no different than any other civil defense program: a strategy for increasing "survivability", no matter that its intentions makes the use of our arsenals incrementally more thinkable.
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