Conserving death

By Kenneth Smith Copyright 1999 Washington Times July 8, 1999

Giving society cheap, abundant energy, said famed environmentalist Paul Ehrlich in 1975, "would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun." Or the equivalent of turning on an air-conditioner that saves his life.

Americans sweltering through a heat wave on the East Coast got a brief look at a world without cheap, abundant power this week, and even that was too long. In the District at least two people died in the heat, including a 73-year-old Northeast woman who died in her overheated house, her body temperature 6 degrees above normal when emergency workers found her. Area schools and a housing complex for elderly residents had to be evacuated for lack of air conditioning. Thousands of residents found themselves without power, particularly in Maryland, as utilities strained to meet demand. Potomac Electric and Power Co. was actually planning to unplug whole neighborhoods to keep the entire system from shutting down.

In New York, hundreds of thousands of residents spent the night without power. Subways shut down, leaving commuters stranded in the heat. But discomfort wasn't the only problem. In blacked-out areas there were numerous attempted break-ins. City officials had to send fire trucks with portable lights to illuminate the streets. New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is threatening to sue the utility that failed to supply the city with enough juice to keep the lights on and the air conditioning going.

It could be worse though. If the Clinton administration, including presidential hopeful Al Gore, and environmentalists get their way, the United States will find itself more and more dependent on exotic and unreliable energy sources like solar, wind and "biomass" power and less and less on the technologies that provide the bulk of the country's energy needs - coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power. The former are supposed to be better for the environment - if not idiot children - and that belief is driving administration energy policy.

Last year Mr. Clinton signed onto the so-called Kyoto Protocol, a treaty designed to reduce emissions of so-called greenhouse gases and, in effect, the use of fossil fuels that generate them. Environmentalists fear those emissions trap heat in the atmosphere and may, a century hence, roast the Earth in a global heat wave that no cold front could ever interrupt. They haven't been able to convince the U.S. Senate, which has been so critical of the Kyoto accord that the administration won't even submit it for ratification, or scientists that the end is near. Some researchers dare to point out that increased concentrations of certain gases might actually be a good thing because plants thrive on them.

Still the administration tries. Its latest scheme is to set up a "pilot project" with Russia that would encourage U.S. companies to spend billions on emission "credits" from Russian firms that have already cut their own emissions either by their own choice or because they went out of business in Russia's collapsing economy. If pressuring firms to hand over cash to bankrupt Russians on the basis of purely theoretical environmental concerns sounds like a good way to bankrupt Americans too, well, the Senate isn't very enthusiastic about the idea either. It's threatening to bar the project explicitly if the administration insists on pursuing the idea.

There are lots of other problems with the Kyoto Protocol's energy restrictions, not the least of which is that they wouldn't apply to "developing" countries like China. But if the United States isn't supposed to use fossil fuels or nuclear power, what are elderly women or school children supposed to rely on to keep the power on?

They could rely on biomass power by burning wood or dung as people in pristine, natural Third World garden spots do, but that doesn't do much for the trees or the air quality. They could build dams on rivers and count on hydro power, but the fish probably wouldn't appreciate it. Solar power? Even assuming the sun is out, it's too expensive. Wind power? Slaughters birds more efficiently than a hunter could and requires vast amounts of land.

There really isn't an environmentally sensitive way to get energy. Wrote Mr. Ehrlich two years ago, "No way of mobilizing energy is free of environmentally damaging side effects, and the uses to which energy from any source is put usually have negative environmental effects as well."

That leaves "conservation." Pepco officials reported that in the wake of this heat wave, some 200 customers opted out of programs that allowed them to save money in exchange for allowing the utility to shut off their air-conditioning for up to six hours. The savings wasn't worth their discomfort or, in a worst case, their life. They aren't idiots. And for the time being, it's still their choice.

Kenneth Smith is deputy editor of The Washington Times editorial page.

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