HOW TO BEAT INFLATION, UNEMPLOYMENT, CRIME, BIG OIL, AND JOGGING
Davidon, Ann Monissett
THE LAST WORD How to beat inflation, unemployment, crime, big oil, and jogging Ann Morrissett Davidon All across the country we see the absurd spectacle of human beings running. They are not...
...Something is rotten in the state of Western civilization, and smashing atoms isn't going to solve it...
...photovoltaic cells...
...Breeder reactors use less uranium but are more dangerous, and fusion is a complex, costly, and still hazardous source of electricity much farther down the road than cheap photovoltaic cells and other solar devices...
...Thus, crime would be down, costs of crime control and public welfare would be down, prices would be down, pollution would be down, and energy supplies would be adequate...
...Assembly lines and offices are windowless or shaded from the light and heat of the sun, which could be providing these assets directly as well as producing electricity needed for light, heat, ventilation, and cooling...
...At the same hour in every city, huge buildings are lit up so that wastebaskets can be emptied, floors can be wiped (if the absent daytime occupants are lucky), and a few executives can feel virtuous about sitting in their lonely offices shuffling papers and phoning spouses or paramours to let them know they'll be late getting home beAnn Morrissett Davidon is a peace activist and free-lance writer in Haverford, Pennsylvania...
...Why, then, are they running...
...Also the root of the inflation problem, the unemployment problem, and the jogging problem...
...Why, then, do we shun the sun...
...Use the proceeds (money and energy) for small businesses and cooperatives to produce more of these devices—thus giving everyone employment, exercise, and ample energy, while leaving the parks and sidewalks safe for children and grandparents and the creative contemplations of Sunday strollers, Utopian dreamers, retired workers, and leisurely lovers of nature...
...They are not running to any place in particular...
...Furthermore, nuclear energy is not a substitute for gasoline: No one has yet run a car by splitting nuclei...
...If farms were fermenting excess grain for small alcohol-run cars, and if every office building and apartment complex and factory had its own largely self-sufficient combination of solar and co-generator systems, how could big oil and big utilities control our energy supplies and...
...Why do we let so much of our tax money be used for research and development of nuclear technologies and devices (including weapons systems for annihilation...
...In the brightly lit offices of the oil executives, record-breaking profits are discussed in hushed tones of cautious joy, while lugubrious and expensive but tax-deductible advertising copy is prepared to tell the public that these really insignificant and inadequate "profits" are required to feed shareholding widows and orphans and to drill for new oil under the chains of hotels the oil companies were obliged to buy...
...make huge profits...
...Every evening, in millions of homes across the country, television sets are blaring and glaring at transfixed jog-junkies who have just returned from an exhausting run around the neighborhood...
...Mainly, it is an expensive and risky way to boil water...
...Voluntarily, of course: These would be called exclusive health clubs, and heavy fees would be charged...
...Corral them into the central gyms to jog on energy-producing treadmills...
...Why so little for developing biomass oil substitutes...
...Don't we read every day about joggers being raped, molested, mugged, and murdered...
...With small-scale energy and conservation industries springing up everywhere and competing with big oil and each other, production would be up, employment would be up, joggers and unemployed youth would be off the streets...
...The Federal budget—about half of which (except for trust funds) goes to the Pentagon—would be balanced...
...Because they sit too much, and feel a need for this purging and conspicuous exercise...
...During the day, these same vast buildings consume no less electricity, since daylight— considered unreliable—is largely shut out, elevators rush up and down carrying inert bodies, coffee machines perk away keeping everyone hyped up and energized by the distraction of pouring, stirring, drinking...
...wind, water, geothermal and passive/ active solar heat and energy systems...
...And since we wouldn't be contemplating war over oil in the Middle East, civil unrest and taxes for the sacrosanct military would also recede...
...Where can we begin...
...cause they have so much work to do, having got to their office later than usual that morning...
...Presumably, running also helps take their minds off their troubles, including the rising cost of energy—and, therefore, of living—which is attributed to diminishing resources and reduced productivity...
...First we could rechannel all that pent-up and misdirected energy of sedentary oil executives...
...Sell them cycles to pedal in their living rooms to generate power for their television sets while they watch Dow-Jones reports...
...They sit there, watching reports on the latest crimes and how the cost of living has just risen another 3.5 percent...
...And that, as I see it, is the crux of the energy problem...
...In factories on the peripheries of the cities, generators and production processes disperse heat inside the buildings and into the surrounding atmosphere—heat that might be recycled within the building to produce more power instead of being carried off by energy-consuming devices...
...The answer is they probably couldn't...
...Quite apart from the hazards involved in the whole nuclear fuel cycle (minimized but not denied by even the heartiest nuclear proponents) and the risks of catastrophic accident or accidental nuclear war, it must be recognized that even uranium is an exhaustible resource...
...there is no place to which they need to get in such a hurry...
Vol. 45 • January 1981 • No. 1
