Among the Intellectualoids/Growing Up Freaked

...But after looking at the available evidence I do not believe that the sun will solve our problems-certainly not in the twentieth century...

...Bethe's figures -and those of the National Academy of Sciences, Resources for the Future, and other learned societiessuggest that unless new energy sources are brought "on stream" relatively soon, such a shortage is inevitable...

...Not surprisingly, the New Class is also terribly preoccupied with rights: the right, for instance, of clams to live in a "thermal-pollution-free" environment, of snail darters to go right on darting, and of the furbish lousewort to continue doing whatever it is a furbish lousewort does...

...Like virtually all other close students of the energy situation, Prof...

...The victory of the New Class, if and when it comes, would not have surprised H.G...

...Maybe in the twenty-first...

...Is there any class whose interests the anti-nuclear movement may be said to advance...

...It also turns out that by the year 2000 we will be unable to supply our energy needs with oil, for the simple reason that there just won't be enough of it left...

...So far, it has failed...

...The exorbitant price of oil stems from decisions taken by the OPEC cartel, and not from any physical shortages...

...Wells's nuclear holocaust did not come off on schedule-although, in the wake of the 1956 Suez war, the Soviet Union did threaten England, France, and Israel with nuclear retaliation-and the good citizens of Brissago live on in relatively tranquil obscurity...

...As Academician V. Yemel'-yanov, corresponding member of the prestigious Soviet Academy of Sciences, argued in a recent issue of the Russian journal Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn' [International Life], the anti-nuclear campaign is directed by the monopolistic groups involved with the use of organic fuel, and above all the oil companies...

...But while Bethe is not sanguine about the prospects for solar energy, he is certainly not hostile to it...

...The first atomic bomb was exploded in 1945, and in the early 1950s England, Canada, the Soviet Union, and the United States all embarked on ambitious programs aimed at generating electric power from controlled nuclear fission...

...Whenever it is economically feasible," he says, "solar energy is a very good thing to use...

...By contrast, the real impact of the energy crisis will not be felt for years...

...nonetheless, Wells's gift for prophecy has, on the whole, been amply vindicated by history...

...Sure enough, in 1933 Frederick and Irene Joliot discovered artificial radioactivity...

...Needless to" say, the New Class would do the regulating...

...But so said all before us, and with just as much apparent reason...

...Indeed, when it comes to accounting for the anti-nuclear movement, Marxism offers quite an interesting perspective...

...In it, he predicted that artificial radioactivity would be discovered in 1933, that atomic energy would be put to widespread industrial use, that atomic bombs would be developed, and that all of Europe would eventually be devastated in a nuclear war...

...In fact, he predicted it...

...Having gained control over organic fuel, ind above all of oil, these monopolies . e earning fabulous profits...

...It is possible, too, to calculate whether there exist sufficient energy reserves to meet those needs...

...Thus, in the eighteenth century the French middle class carried out its revolution in the name of the "Rights of Man," by which it really meant the rights of the French middle class...

...interestingly enough, though, Soviet scientists have engaged in quite a bit of public speculation about the motives of the anti-nuclear movement in the United States, and they have concluded that this movement is part of a plot concocted by the oil companies to discredit nuclear power...

...As it happens, the anti-nuclear movement meets the requirements of the New Class to a tee...

...Once the battle is safely won, Esoteric Wisdom might well become Revealed Doctrine...

...Currently, there is no shortage of oil-in fact, there's quite a lot of it around...

...In politics, however, timing is everything...

...That war, according to Wells, was to take place in 1956, and would be followed by a conference in Brissago, Italy, where the surviving nations would establish a world government...

...are agents of Standard Oil...

...A Marxist analysis of the anti-nuclear movement must therefore begin by specifying its class content...

...The immediate corollary of that argument -that the politics of scarcity must inevitably empower the New Class- is a point these writers invariably fail to develop.f If and when the New Class is finally empowered, it is not inconceivable prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning-point, that we have seen our best days...

...According to Bethe's calculations, even under the most optimistic assumptions-a stable standard of living, stringent conservation measures, and a low GNP growth rate-our energy requirements in the year 2000 will be 40 percent greater than they are now...

...This class, Kristol goes on to say, is not so much interested in money as it is in power-the kind of power which, in a capitalist society, ordinarily resides in the free market: "The 'New Class' wants to see much of this power redistributed to government," where it will then have a major say in how this power is exercised...

...Bethe- whose discovery of the specific mechanisms that generate solar energy won him the Nobel Prize in 1967- does not believe that the sun's energy can be utilized to provide a significant portion of our energy needs in the foreseeable future...

...Starting from a perfectly reasonable premise-that oil companies are probably less than grief-stricken over the rise of widespread opposition to the use of nuclear power-Vulgar Marxists derive the most bizarre conclusions, e.g., the notion that Jane Fonda, Barry Commoner, Ralph Nader, et al...

...A very different kind of prophet, but one whose gift is the equal of Wells's, is Hans Bethe, Nobel laureate and Professor Emeritus of Physics at Cornell University...

...Since the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74, Bethe has been preoccupied with the "energy crisis...

...Wells's prophecies, Bethe's projections deal with energy, especially nuclear energy...

...The answer, clearly, is that its aims are congruent with the interests of the "New Class," a group which consists, in Irving Kris-tol's vivid definition, "of a goodly proportion of those college-educated people whose skills and vocations proliferate in a 'post-industrial society' . . . and who make their careers in the expanding public sector, the staffs of the larger foundations, the upper levels of the government bureaucracy, and so on...

...Yemel'yanov's analysis of the anti-nuclear movement is an excellent illustration of what has frequently been called, "Vulgar Marxism," the tendency to attribute practically everything to the sinister manipulations of all-powerful corporations...

...In the event that the new administration does rise to the challenge, it will have to encourage the increased use of coal and nuclear power, the only energy sources which can meet projected demands and replace oil and gas, both of which are running out (though at different rates...

...Whether the American political system can cope with a crisis whose very existence is evident only in the arcane calculations of Prof...

...Wells believed that this educated elite was destined to come to power, and he foresaw that it would ultimately "take the world in hand" and create "a sane order...

...In addition to aligning itself with movements that further its interests, Marx argued, a class on the make will also elaborate an ideology which, although cast in universal terms, actually serves to legitimize its bid for power...

...The ideology by which it justifies these concerns is called "Limits to Growth," and its ideologues-writers like Richard Barnet, Jeremy Rifkin, and Paul Ehrlich-argue tirelessly that our society must adjust itself to what Barnet calls the "politics of scarcity" if it is to avoid ecological ruin...

...These numbers deal with such variables as population growth, productivity, GNP, energy consumption rates, and energy reserves...

...On the other hand, there is the Esoteric Wisdom, known only to the higher cadres, which admits that nuclear power might not be so dangerous after all, were it to be administered by the benevolent members of the New Class instead of by profit-hungry capitalists...

...In many respects, the challenge posed to American society by the "energy crisis" is unprecedented.' Previous crises have tested the ability of the United States to meet an immediate, obvious threat: the Depression, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba, and so on...

...Just what this catastrophe would be remained an open question for Wells, but certainly a massive energy shortage would do as nicely as anything else...

...This, in a nutshell, is what the "energy crisis" is all about: finding other energy sources to replace oil, and finding new energy supplies to meet the growing energy demand...

...Precisely these circles are interested in causing mistrust of the new powerful competitor in the energy area, and impeding the energy use of nuclear processes, or at least limiting its scale...

...On what principle is it that, when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us...

...On the one hand, there is the Revealed Doctrine, preached by and to the movement's faithful, which proclaims nukes to be wicked and the sun to be good...

...With these figures, it is possible to project our energy needs several decades from now...

...Until the New Class achieves its political objectives, the Esoteric Wisdom must remain confined to a handful of hierophants, lest the rank-and-file grow confused...

...There is, however, good reason to distinguish between Marxism and Vulgar Marxism...

...While the latter is clearly a form of dottiness, the former, if employed with a little subtlety, can occasionally provide useful insights into the workings of society...

...that its hostility to nuclear power will disappear...

...In contrast to Wells's forecasts, which were compounded of profound intuition and inspired guesswork, Bethe's views are the product of painstaking analysis by a lifetime of scientific inquiry...

...History thus appears to be following the Wellsian blueprint rather closely, and the time remaining for critics of the New Class/New Republicans to change its course is rapidly running out.e is rapidly running out...

...Bethe and others remains to be seen...

...That I just don't know...

...Prof...

...I like the sun," Bethe told Bernstein, "after all, I found out how the sun works...

...But how can the New Class achieve its aims...

...The 75-year-old physicist spends his days doing what he has done for most of his life-studying numbers...

...Like H.G...

...Even now, it is possible to detect two distinct trains of thought within the anti-nuclear movement...

...But prior to this happy denouement, society would first have to undergo a catastrophe of sufficient magnitude to induce its members to entrust their collective destiny to the wise and beneficent New Republicans...

...The movement's program, if implemented, would result in an energy-deficient society, one in which everything from speed limits to room temperature to home design-and ultimately, to life-style itself-would have to be regulated by the government...

...Unfortunately, neither Bethe nor Bernstein speculates about why anyone should want to impede the development of energy sources capable of averting an otherwise inevitable energy famine...

...An excellent summary of those views is provided in Jeremy Bernstein's profile of Bethe, aptly titled Hans Bethe Prophet of Energy...

...From a Marxist viewpoint, politics deals essentially with the interactions among opposing social classes, in much the same sense that chemistry, for example, deals with the interactions between adjacent electron-shells...

...To any competent Marxist, the answer, once again, is exceedingly obvious: through supporting those movements whose proclaimed goals would facilitate the emergence of an administratively dominated society...

...What is nowadays widely referred to as the New Class, Wells at the turn of the century called the "New Republicans...

...What troubles Bethe about solar energy is that "people use it as an excuse, a reason for not developing other sources of energy-primarily nuclear and coal-which we know how to use, and which, in combination, could satisfy our energy needs...