Page 26 RAIN Oct./Nov. 1983 REMEMBRANCE OF THEMES PAST What makes a RAIN article memorable? Sometimes it has to do with a "watershed" quality—a new theme or idea that seems to signal a significant shift in people's way of looking at the xoorld. Sometimes it has to do with a provocative quality— an ability to stir up healthy debate among RAIN's readers. And sometimes there is simply a vivid image or some timeless wisdom that stays in the reader's mind long after the magazine has been filed away for future reference. We thought about many past RAIN articles as we planned for this special anniversary issue. The selections below and the two articles that immediately follow ("Sharing Smaller Pies" and "An Open Letter to the Ecological Movement") provide just a sampling of the ideas and images that have madefor a memorable first RAIN decade.—JF From: “Getting Efficient" by Amory Lovins November 1979 Amory Lovins, whose work has appeared in RAIN's pages a number of times since 1976, has a knack for finding images that expose the absurdity of traditional energy strategies more effectively than reams ofstatistics. We always remember "Getting Efficient" as “the refrigerator article.” You'll see why when you read the excerpt below. ... The conventional wisdom says that insulating our houses better, designing better appliances, better cars, better machinery in factories, we can save something like 20 to 40 percent of our energy and be just as well off.... However, the conventional wisdom is wrong. It comes from not looking quite carefully enough at how great the opportunities are for using energy more efficiently through what are called “technical fixes" ... Let me take as my text for a moment your refrigerator. ... Around the end of World War II, your refrigerator motor was probably 80 or 90 percent efficient and it sat on top. Nowadays the motor is maybe 50 or 60 percent efficient, probably because the price of electricity to your house has dropped severalfold since then, and the motor sits underneath so its heat goes up into the box. Therefore, your refrigerator probably spends about half of its effort taking away the heat of its own motor! Then the manufacturers have skimped on insulation.... Because of that, and because it is designed so that when you open the door all the cold air falls out, it frosts up. So your refrigerator probably has in it a lot of electric space heaters which go on now and then to defrost it. And it probably has electric heaters around the door to keep the gasket from sticking because they cannot be bothered to use a Teflon coating. Then the heat gets pumped out the back into a kind of radiator which is usually pressed right into that thin insulation to help the heat get back inside as fast as possible.... It really is hard to think of a better way to waste energy. Now if you design the thing properly, it keep the same amount of food just as cold, and conveniently, using only a sixth as much electricity as now.... There is an extra capital cost for this factor of six, but you get it back in about three years from your electricity savings. Highly cost effective! These are the kinds of measures I am talking about throughout the economy—not just in the household— and they add up to very large savings indeed.... From: “The Do-Gooder Dilemma: Inappropriate Technology Transfer" by Laura Stuchinsky November 1980 This critique of the methods and philosophy ofa number of international a. t. organizations generated one of the most spirited reader responses—pro and con—ofany RAIN article published in recent years. In reviewing much of the work being done today in international development, it becomes increasingly clear that many a.t. groups focus on technological solutions in lieu of acting on socio-economic problems.... While there is definite value in many of the ideas and tools that are being developed by [such]... groups, it is essential that their application be considered in light of the political and social context in which they will be used. Technology is not a neutral process. To the contrary, it is an expression and reinforcement of the cultural and economic patterns from which it derives. As in
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