June] 98] RAIN Page]] ACCESS CONSUMERS Help: The Indispensable Almanac of Consumer Information 1981, edited by Arthur E. Rowse, 620 pp., $9.95 from: Everest House Publishers 1133 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10036 This guide is loaded with facts and figures that most almanacs don't even mention: special corporate lobby links to Congress; nuclear plant safety records; hospital cost comparisons; listings of food additives, etc. The best sections are on individual rights and self-help resources, including an extensive listing of national and local community change/public interest organizations. There's lots of interesting tidbits on both the problems of "our ripoff society" and strategies on how to deal with it. Reasonably priced and easy to read, this almanac may prove to be very useful in these years of massive de-regulation and Reaganomics. We can use all the "help" we can get. -SR Lemon-Aid, 1981 edition, by Phil Edmonston, 681 pp., $10.95 from: Beaufort Books 9 East 40th Street New York, NY 10016 If you're in the market for a car this year, you won't be taken for a ride with this guide. Edmonston, a veteran consumer crusader and author of eleven best-sellers on the car ttade, is straightforward with his criticism from the very first sentence: "The automobile industry is founded on fraud, deception, and a wholesale disregard for public safety." The most interesting parts of the book are the dictionary of dirty tricks on the car repair trade, the chapter on beating the system when buying a used car, and the section which describes successful examples of consumer pressure tactics on the auto industry. There are also ratings for more used car models than I ever knew existed. Unlike the "independent engineer" testing system used by Consumers Union and others, Edmonston's rating methods rely heavily on consumer complaints. A must for the auto junkie, Lemon-Aid can satisfy anyone who is thirsty for a car. -SR NUKES Energy/War: Breaking the Nuclear Link, by Amory and Hunter Lovins, 1980,168 pp., $10.00 from: Friends of the Earth Books 124 Speak Street San Francisco, CA 94105 In many ways, Energy/ War is both an extension and an update of the debate that began with the publication of Soft Energy Paths, offering a summation of the last two years or so of the Lovins' work (portions of which have appeared in the November '79 and January '81 issues of RAIN) that begins where most discussions of the nuclear power and nuclear weapons link leave off. Not only is the nuclear weapons proliferation that results from nuclear power programs an immense threat to world political stability, but the entire economic, environmental, and technical rationale that supported the development of civilian reactor technology in the first place has been called into question over the last couple of years. It now appears that nuclear power, which today delivers about half as much energy in the United States as does firewood, is unlikely to get out of the firewood league in this century if ever. Nuclear forecasts worldwide are still plummeting-more for economic than for politi ca l reasons. The USSR, for example, achieved only a third of its nuclear goal for the 1970s, half for the past five years, despite the unlimited power of the state to crus h dissent . The first Soviet pressurized-water rea cto r is five years behind schedule. It is equally revealing that the pattern of decline in official nuclear forecasts for the United States and for Canada is virtually identical, even though there have been essentially no procedural barriers to building reactors in Canada. Clearly the cause of the collapse is far deeper and more universal than mere U.S . regulatory hassles. The collapse of nuclear technology as a viable option has led to the exciting prospect of a society that is reliant on the wise use of renewable energy: So powerful, indeed, is th e convergence between political and economic logic that it is hardly surprising how quickly a soft energy path is starting to implement itself through existing political and market processes. But the question remains whether a sustainable energy future will be achieved relatively smoothly by choice, or disruptively by necessity after the fOSSil-fuel bridge has been burned in a vain pursuit of other solutions that do not work. This book is clearly directed at a wider audience than Soft Energy Paths. The writing style is considerably less technical (although it is as fully referenced and footnoted as ever) and the topics discussed here cover a lot of ground pretty quickly. Although the thesis should be familiar to veteran energy watchers, the insights into the nature of the nuclear link should hold your interest pretty well. If you are trying to explain to someone why a soft energy path is essential, Energy / War is a good place to start. -KB Atom's Eve: Ending the Nuclear Age, an Anthology, compiled and edited by Mark Reader with Ronald A. Hardert and Gerald L. Moulton, 1980, 285 pp., $5.95 from: McGraw-Hill 330 West 42nd Street New York, NY 10036 If you have relatives or friends who have started to ask the right questions about nuclear safety since Three Mile Island but are still unclear about the broader implications of a nuclear future , here is a book to help get them thinking-and acting. The editors of Atom's Eve aim it squarely at this marginally anti-nuclear segment of the population, commenting in their introduction that " the true issue of the nuclear debate is not whether isolated atomic reactors ... can be made safe, but rather the sort of lives people will be forced to lead while they secure them." The implications of the nuclear fuel cycle for people's health, safety, civil liberties, employment and military secu ri ty are described in brief, stimulating, non-esoteric articles by such authors as Barry Commoner, Jacques Cousteau , Helen Caldicott and Denis Hayes. Several " action guides" are included to direct the reader to related publications and to antinuclear organizations. Atom's Eve is an excellent primer. It is also an example of something we need to see a lot more of: quality, no-nonsense anti-nuclear reading material, directed toward a broad audience which has for too long received careful attention from industry and utility propagandists. - JF
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