Document byY42X4jo9EvQXoY2vGxbv7rk

playboy interview: BARRY COMMONER a candid conversation with the crusading environmentalist "oil crisis abates," read the headline in The New York Times. In the adjacent column, a dispatch from Dallas reported news of a scientific gathering at which expert after expert had warned of some ecological doomsday to come. Said one: "I believe that unless we begin to match our technological power with a deeper understanding of the environment, we run the risk of destroying this planet as a suitable place for human habitation.'' It all sounds like a typical front page from the early months of 1974--but the date line was December 29, 1968; the oil crisis cited was caused by a truck drivers' strike rather than an Arab embargo; and its juxtaposition with the environmental story was fortuitous. Not many Ameri cans in 1968 considered the possibility of either an energy crisis or an environ mental crisis--let alone the fact that the two might be interrelated. One American who did was the scientist quoted above: Barry Commoner, director of the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Washington University in St. Louis. In the years since then. Commoner has crisscrossed the country making speeches, appearing on dozens of talk shows, writ ing magazine articles and books--most recently his best-selling 1971 work, "The Closing Circle"---all sounding the same alarm. Air-pollution expert Lewis Green once called Commoner "a Paul Revere waking the country to environmental dangers"; Time labeled him "the uncom mon spokesman for the common man." Perhaps no other scientist today possesses so broad a grasp of the modern techno logical dilemma, with our insatiable demand for energy pitied against the inescapable necessity to reduce environ mental pollution. So indefatigable is he in getting that message before the public that it's difficult to believe he's the same Barry Commoner who, as an adolescent, was sentenced to a corrective speech class--to overcome shyness. Commoner, 57, uras born and raised in Brooklyn, where his father, a tailor, had immigrated from Russia. The streets were his playground as a child, but he escaped as often as possible to Brooklyn's parks, where he roamed about collecting biological specimens. An honors gradu ate of Columbia University, he went on to receive AI.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard before getting caught up in World War Tiuo, during which he served as a lieutenant in naval aviation. In 1947, he joined the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis, where he has remained since, developing an everbroadening range of interests--and con comitant clout. He began as a biologist, and his work with the tobacco mosaic virus and its relationship to genetics ted eventually to the isolation of RNA (ribo nucleic acid) and the discovery of free radicals (molecules with unpaired elec trons), which play a vital role in cell metabolism and photosynthesis. This, in turn, pointed the way to new methods of delecting cancer. No ivory-tower research specialist, Commoner has long believed in the sci entist's need to see the whole picture-- and his obligation to speak out about what he sees. Back when the word ecology was merely an obscure dictionary entry. Commoner was warning about technol ogy's deleterious effects on the environ ment. In the Fifties, alarmed about officialdom's failure to alert the citizenry about the dangers of strontium 90, he helped found the St. Louis Committee for Nuclear Information (later to become the Committee for Environmental Infor mation) and barnstormed the country. His efforts bore fruit in 1965 with the adoption of the nuclear-test-ban treaty, but he has gone on to speak out against other menaces; notably, the pollution of air, soil and water by the excessive use of detergents, insecticides, herbicides and other chemicals. Commoner's St. Louis center, which he has directed since 1966, is an eclectic institution through which he and his TOOSTSEK "The current energy crunch is simply the result of oil-industry policies that have used the legitimate idea of real shortages in the future as a smoke screen for creating phony ones today." "Nixon appointed Dixy Lee Ray, head of the A EC, to lead the task force drawing up a plan for our energy future. Thai's like asking the chief fox to work out a research program in the chicken house." HERB WEITMAN "Failure to understand--and act upon-- the ecological, economic and political im peratives that push us toward developing solar energy will end in disaster. It's as simple--and as crucial--as that." 55 T V ^ researchers can draw upon multiple dis- were putting out, asking us to believe geophysical exploration units in the q ciplines to conduct basic studies on the that it's only an amazing coincidence field, lias dropped by more than 50 per complex relationships between man and that at precisely the time the public is cent. But the ratio of oil found per ex his natural environment--and the ways being asked to make tremendous sacri ploratory well drilled is constant. The in which the former has been poisoning fices, their companies are racking up the conclusion one must draw from this is gi the latter. To see if he has come up with greatest multibillion-dollar profits in his not that oil is becoming harder to find any answers to the twin problems of tory. Well, it's no coincidence. in the U. S. but that less effort is being energy and environment, playboy sent PLAYBOY: How do you know? put into finding it. The crews are being writer Larry DuBois to St. Louis to inter COMMONER: There are a lot of interrelat shipped overseas, particularly to Saudi view Commoner on his home ground. ed reasons that lead to the conclusion Arabia. His report: that it was the oil companies' drive for PLAYBOY: Why Saudi Arabia? "/ knew that Commoner was consid maximized profits that got us into the COMMONER: You might well ask that, ered a moving force behind the environ situation we're in. To begin with, there's since there is also plenty of oil in Iran, mental movement, but since I hadn't read absolutely no reason why, in 197-1, the which has a foreign policy much friend or heard much about him in the press, it U.S. should be suffering from a shortage lier to the United States. But the U. S. oil wasn't until I saw him on a Dick Cavett of the fossil fuels--oil, coal and natural companies chose to concentrate their ex show last fall that I realized why. He's an gas--whether or not there had been an ploration in the Saudi Arabian oil fields impressive man: formidably intelligent Arab embargo. There is enough recover because they could get the oil out of the and encyclopedically articulate, but in a able oil under the ground in this coun ground and into the tankers more cheap way that communicates his wide-ranging try today--and I'm not counting the ly from there than from the Iranian knowledge as clearly and concisely to lay Alaskan fields that the companies are so fields. So I think it's a hard fact that men as to his scientific colleagues. You'd anxious to exploit--to supply our needs, Saudi Arabia's ability to put the screws never guess it, however, by looking at his even at the rate at which we now use oil, on us was virtually handed to King office--a big old nondescript room clut for probably 20 to 25 years, and maybe Faisal by the oil companies. The major tered with thousands of books on every even longer. company handling production of oil imaginable subject and piled high with But let me put this very bluntly: The from Saudi Arabian fields is Aramco, the hand- and typewritten papers in seem- present dependence of all industrial so Arabian-American Oil Company, which ingly chaotic disarray. But perhaps he's cieties on fossil fuels cannot go on indef is roughly 75 percent owned by four memorized them all, for he didn't need initely. There are limited amounts of major U. S. companies; which means, as to consult any sources when his phone such fuels on the earth, laid down once has been pointed out in the press, that rang--as it did frequently during our tap and once only over millions of years, and the embargo against the United States ing sessions--with questions from asso ciates working on projects ranging from utilization of agricultural chemicals to the study of carcinogens. "I found Commoner to be not only amazingly well informed but a warm, engaging, high-spirited man who obvi ously enjoys his work as much as his weekend leisure time, which he likes to spend, when he can, with his psychologist wife, Gloria, on their farm in the Ozarks. Despite his congested schedule, he kept to our agreement of two or three hours in conversation every afternoon for most of a week. At the time, the energy crisis was just beginning to usurp headline attention and the public was disturbed, confused, annoyed--and slightly cynical about it. I figured that if anybody would have any answers. Commoner would. So that's how we started--with a skeptical question about the reality of the crisis." we are engaged in burning them up dur ing a relatively short span of human his tory. We have based what we hope to be an ongoing civilization on the suicidal concept of supplying our energy needs by using nonrenewable resources that won't last, and it won't wash. It's as sim ple as that. The real energy crisis lies in our need to develop indefinitely lasting, ecologically sound sources of energy. The current crunch is simply the result of oil-industry policies that have used the legitimate idea of real shortages in the future as a smoke screen for creating phony ones today. PLAYBOY: How did that happen? COMMONER: The entire pattern of oil ex ploration during the last 17 years has shifted overseas. Most of the big U. S. oil firms' exploration is now taking place abroad, to the point where the amount of oil being found in the U. S. each year was largely administered by U.S. firms. Another reason the oil companies are producing in Saudi Arabia rather than in the United States is that they've worked out sweetheart deals with both the U. S. Government and the Saudi Arabian gov ernment that allow them to escape paying income taxes in the U. S. at the same rate that other U. S. industries do. This was done under the cover of a foreign-policy decision, supposedly using oil investment as a means of support ing countries in the Middle East whose friendship the U. S. wished to court. But the main point is that it has yielded much bigger profits for the oil com panies than their U. S. operations. According to testimony before Senator Church's subcommittee on multinational corporations, they paid no taxes on their overseas profits in 1972. They don't have that good a deal on the production of oil PLAYBOY: Is there really an energy crisis? COMMONER: There certainly is, but it isn't the one tire oil companies would have us believe. They've spent millions of dollars in an advertising blitz aimed at persuading the public that because the U.S. is running out of its own fuel reserves, we've been forced into increas ing dependence on foreign oil imports-- is insufficient to take care of our annual needs. As far as I'm concerned, our vul nerability to the Arab embargo was solely the consequence of the operating philosophy of the U.S. oil companies, who realized years ago they could get a higher rate of return on their investment by producing and refining oil abroad, and they simply walked away from ex at home, so the economic incentive to produce abroad isn't hard to under stand. There is an enormous amount of hocus-pocus in the economics of how for eign oil is bought, paid for and sold by these U.S. companies, but the way the game works out, they make more of a profit by being tax collectors for Saudi especially from the Middle East--and ploration in the U. S. That's what made Arabia than they would as energy- that largely because of the Arab embar go, we suddenly got in trouble. They've portrayed their own role as that of blameless public servants, just doing the best they can in a bad situation that they played no selfish part in creating. In my us dependent on foreign oil. PLAYBOY: But aren't the oil companies conducting so much of their exploration overseas because, as they claim, it's too difficult to strike oil here anymore? COMMONER: They can strike oil if they producing entities for the United States. Those taxes, by the way, are based upon an artificially inflated, mutually agreed upon price per barrel of oil. After the tax is collected, the oil is actually sold at a lower price. mind, one of the bright sides of the last look for it. Since 1957. the number of ex There is another way that the Arab few months is how quickly people saw ploratory wells drilled in the U. S., and embargo proved a major boon to these 55 through the flimflam the oil companies the number of crew months worked by U.S. companies. If you, as a part owner Z003T9SZ T of Aramco, own underground reserves of oil in Saudi Arabia and the Arabs dou ble or triple the price at which they sell the oil, the value of your reserves has doubled or tripled, too. That's a quick way to make money. playboy: Are you suggesting a conspiracy between the American companies and the Arab governments? COMMONER: I think most people in this country are convinced that the oil com panies have worked out some sort of deal--and so am I. It doesn't take much more than an elementary understanding of the basic economics of supply and de mand for the Arabs to realize that the American companies wouldn't resist seeing their reserves doubling or tripling in value. So here we have the oil com panies collecting taxes for Saudi Arabia, administering anti-American embargoes, trying to run our foreign policy in the Middle East--remember the oil execu tive who suggested, in the midst of the latest Arab-Israeli war, that we should look more favorably on the Arab side?-- and developing energy supplies else where in the world when we need more energy developed here at home. It's a ri diculous situation, or it would be if it weren't so serious. PLAYBOY: And all of this has been build ing up over the past 17 years? COMMONER: Yes, but it's been happening even faster since 1969. Overseas oil ex ploitation became even more attractive after our domestic oil-depletion allow ance was reduced from 27 percent to 22 percent. Before that, we used to have gas wars. Remember them? PLAYBOY: Sure, and fairly recently we still had gasoline trading stamps, contests, free glasses. You could even get your windshield wiped. COMMONER: There was a service station on every corner and a battle just to keep pouring gasoline out of the pump, be cause the best opportunity for the oil companies to earn profits was simply by pumping the oil out of the ground. I'm told by people who know the business that diere was a time in the Sixties when many of the big companies were making little or no profit on the sale of gaso line--but it paid them to get rid of it be cause they were making money from Uncle Sam, who handed them some of their taxes back every time they pumped a barrel of oil out of the ground. In a sense, the entire oil industry consisted of a kind of complicated pipeline that ended up in the motorist's gasoline tank solely for the purpose of sucking the oil out of the ground at the other end. Well, when the depletion allowance was cut, they couldn't make so much at the oil-well end, so they had to look else where. One solution, as I've just pointed out, was overseas exploitation. The other was to get more from the consumer--by raising prices. In order to do that, they have treated us to the spectacle of pro gramed shortages. We had them on a smaller scale, you'll remember, even in 1971 and 1972--long before there was any hint of an Arab oil embargo. PLAYBOY: What kind of men are these oilcompany executives? Are they some sort of buccaneers? COMMONER: Well, they're certainly in business to make a buck, and they do a very good job of it. I know only one of them personally, and he's a bird watcher who gets involved in conservation and is widely regarded as a nice guy. I don't think he wants to hurt anybody. On the other hand, it's possible that he doesn't really understand what's happening. Some industry people maintain that they underestimated the demand for energy in the United States and therefore didn't build enough refineries to provide for the demand for oil products in the Unit ed States--or enough pipelines to move it around to where it was needed. They're saying they were caught by sur prise. But it takes three to five years to build a refinery, and there must be hundreds of experts in the oil industry whose job it is to forecast such things. PLAYBOY: And they didn't? COMMONER: Well, it's an interesting thing, but Ken Jamieson, the head of Exxon, gave a speech to the Economic Club in Detroit on January 28, and he simply claimed the oil industry had made a mistake. They didn't expect domestic demand to match supply by 1973, he said. The same day, a former Shell Oil Company vice-president, in an interview in The New York Times, recalled having attended an energy-fore cast meeting in 1968 at which it was pre dicted that the demand for petroleum products would exceed supply sometime between 1972 and 1974. I find it difficult to believe that Exxon was less competent than Shell to make that prediction, but that's what Jamieson in his Detroit speech would have us believe. And there was somediing even more interesting in that interview with the former Shell executive, something we have also substantiated through the pe troleum industry's own figures. Our cen ter here at Washington University is now doing something that, amazingly, not even the Government has done before--compiling petroleum-industry data. In the interview I mentioned, the ex-Shell man pointed out that the refin eries in this country are still not operat ing at full capacity, and they've been fiuctuating. In 1972, the refineries east of the Rocky Mountains operated at 87.5 percent of their capacity. Last October, refinery utilization hit 95.4 percent, but last March it was down to 84.4. PLAYBOY: Why would production go down when gas is needed so desperately? COMMONER: Well, there are various rea sons. One important reason is that an apparent shortage in supply is a good excuse for raising prices. At a recent Sen- ate hearing, a memorandum from oilcompany economists recommending that supplies be reduced in order to raise prices was read into the record. And, of course, that's just what has happened since last summer--a sharp increase in fuel prices, just on the basis of a scare about shortages. And sometimes it be hooves the major refineries to withhold gasoline from independent merchants in order to drive them out of the market. A number of people have said the reason for the difficulties we had in 1972 and early 1973, when drere were minor short ages--again, long before die Arab em bargo--may well have been the result of efforts to squeeze independents out of the market; there have been some Con gressional hearings about that. Another reason is that the balance be tween gasoline and fuel-oil refining, or the diversion of crude oil into petro chemical manufacturing, is entirely in the hands of the oil companies. They can decide how much of a barrel of crude oil will be made into gasoline, or home heating oil, or the chemicals that make plastics. The big oil companies are called vertically integrated industries because they do everything from getting the oil out of the ground to refining it into different chemicals and in some cases even manufacturing end products such as plastics. They decide how much of the various products to make, and they manipulate the balance solely to suit themselves--with regard only to maxi mizing the profits of the oil industry. As a result of all these manipulations, the auto industry is suffering; the public is paying exorbitant prices for a gallon of gasoline--until recently, after enduring long waits in line just to get it; the poor face rent increases because the landlords say they have to pay more for fuel oil; the truck drivers go on strike because they can't afford to absorb the increase in price of diesel fuel. We're in trouble, and because of that very trouble, the oil companies are making more money than they've ever made before. And we find ourselves stampeded into acts of en vironmental lunacy like Congressional approval for the Alaskan pipeline-- although I think now that many Con gressmen realize they've been had. PLAYBOY: We haven't seen any evidence of that. COMMONER: Well, they should feel had, because it's now clear that the shortages haven't been that severe and, in any case, there's lots of oil available that the oil companies have been unwilling to look for. It's been estimated that the oil on Alaska's North Slope may provide the U. S. with a two-or-three-ycar supply. So we've extended the country's oil re sources from, say, 20 years to 23 years. For that, we may permanently wreck the ecosystem in Alaska. Is it worth it? I don't think so. Since the recent Congres sional hearings, everyone knows that we 57 T don't need to get into this dubious ccoq logical risk in Alaska, that a relatively simple way to increase our oil supply would be to take more oil out of Texas and Oklahoma. PLAYBOY: Why are the companies so anx- ious to build the pipeline in Alaska if they can get oil out of Texas and P* Oklahoma? COMMONER: Because they're going to make a lot of money out of it; they got the Alaskan oil rights at bargain rates. I've seen figures on the earnings expect ed, and they're something in the neigh borhood of 50 billion dollars. PLAYBOY: Isn't the Alaska-pipeline con troversy, during which the oil companies and President Nixon attempted to pin much of the blame for oil shortages on environmentalists, an example of the danger the energy crisis poses for envi ronmental causes? Won't the environ ment, in the long run, be the big loser? COMMONER: I think the public has better sense than that. Have environmentalists been the target of the outraged Ameri can taxicab driver? The answer is no. It's the oil-company executives who have been getting it in the neck. There's been a clear-cut test case in New Hampshire. Aristotle Onassis tried to pressure the state into allowing him to build a halfbillion-dollar refinery on the seacoast. The governor supported him, and Mr. Simon, the energy czar, told the people of New Hampshire that if the refinery were built, they could be sure of plenty of cheap gasoline. But the people were unwilling to sacrifice environmental quality and they turned the proposition down. I think it's simply marvelous to see how capable people have become of dealing with these issues. I think, for one thing, they'll soon see through the phoniness of Nixon's proposals for solv ing the energy crisis. PLAYBOY: In what way are they phony? COMMONER: Take them one by one. First, the need to relax standards for the siting of nuclear plants is a total hoax, because no nuclear power plant now being planned is going to help the energy crisis for the next eight to ten years; but ac cording to Nixon himself, there won't be an energy crisis by 1980. In fact, lie says there isn't any crisis noiu--only a "prob lem." So that's simply a way of using hysteria over energy shortages to get that particidar camel into the tent. Then take the business of relaxing air-pollu tion standards, allowing industry to use high-sulphur coal because of a shortage of fuel oil. We now know there is no .country-wide shortage of fuel oil; it's simply a question of working out an ef fective way of getting oil from one part of the country to another, and if the Government can't organize lluil. they ought to turn in their buttons. And the businesspf relaxing automobile-emission standards^is totally ridiculous, because 58 the present exhaust devices arc already inadequate for controlling pollution. PLAYBOY: How so? COMMONER: All they do is hold back waste hydrocarbons, which react with nitrogen oxide to form smog. Since the introduc tion of emission devices, Los Angeles has less smog, but the concentration of poi sonous nitrogen oxide in Los Angeles' air has shot up, because it has nothing to react with. The real answer is to force Detroit to build small, properly designed engines; that will simultaneously solve both the energy question and the envi ronmental question. But Nixon's not asking for that. PLAYBOY: What you say may be true--that the public won't buy Nixon's arguments or those of the oil companies. But isn't it also true that there is less public concern today about ecology than there was, say, two years ago? Hasn't the furor died down? COMMONER: It's pretty clear that environ mentalism hasn't suffered a real decline in public interest. Inflation and the price of fuel are obviously concerning more people at the moment; even I am more concerned about inflation at this point than I am about air pollution, be cause I think inflation is a sign of very serious failures in our economic system that make it impossible to solve any problem, including that of air pollution. But people have come to realize that the very things they'd heard praised over and over again on television--big cars, detergents, synthetic fibers, all these things that were being touted as the pin nacle of civilization--are the very things that have been wreaking havoc with the environment. Concern with environ mental problems has become firmly embedded in the social and political processes. There's a tremendous increase in the frequency with which bond issues and similar referendums on environmen tal issues win. And notice how Congress votes. An awful lot of Congressmen have been turned into environmentalists by their constituents. PLAYBOY: And you think they'll stay that way, despite the energy crisis? COMMONER: Because of it. Energy prob lems are going to be the cutting edge for environmental problems. They are inextricably linked. Most of our en vironmental problems come from the use of energy. To me, the striking thing about the environmental crisis is that it was produced during my lifetime as a sci entist; it happened right before our eyes through a transformation of our produc tive technology; and the most funda mental facet ol that transformation was the displacement of natural products by synthetic ones. Let me put it this way: If we could bring the U. S. environ ment back to where it was at the end of World War Two. I think everybody would be happy. Things were pretty good then. I was in naval aviation in those days, and when I flew across the country, I could see the countryside, not thick brown clouds. The skies were clear in 194G. But shortly thereafter, the amount of pollution emitted each year started jumping--by ten- and twentyfold. PLAYBOY: Wily? COMMONER: Well, some of us wondered the same thing when we began back in the Fifties to track back the causes of these problems. At first we were inter ested in radioactive fallout, but other things kept turning up. The scientific re search became as exciting as any mystery story. It was like facing a bunch of those Chinese boxes; you start opening them, always hoping to find the explanation, but there are always more boxes inside. What we discovered was that the basic cause of this increased pollution was a series of drastic changes in the technol ogy of industry and agriculture. It's amaz ing how many changes took place. We accept these things now, hardly notice them, but in 1946 there were practically no plastics on the market. You didn't have all this Satan Wrap and all those plastic olive stabbers, and buttons were made of shell, not plastic. The clothes you wore were of cotton and wool, some silk. People and freight rode on trains, not planes and trucks. It takes five times as much fuel to move a ton-mile of freight by truck as it does by railroad. Yet trucking has taken over a great deni of freight hauling from railroads in the last 20 years. A returnable beer bottle in 1946 made an average of 40 round trips before it was discarded; but today every time you drink a bottle of beer, it's instant waste. Even counting the en ergy needed to wash and refill a return able bottle, the cost of creating and discarding today's bottle, in terms of en ergy use and environmental impact, is much larger than it used to be. You go down the line and you get the same kind of pattern. Take tire automo bile. Prewar cars caused no smog what soever, for a simple reason: Their engines ran at a temperature less than that required to produce the chemicals in exhaust that lead to smog. By raising the compression ratio, and therefore the temperature, in engines, for the sake of higher power, Detroit's engineers made smog generators--and gas guzzlers--out of the American automobile. Detergents are probably the classic case. Before World War Two, we washed with soap. Synthetic detergents now represent something like 80 percent of the clean ing agents sold, and they're made from petroleum and natural gas. So you're using fossil fuels instead of natural fats as a raw material; you're burning energy from fossil fuels to turn that raw .mate rial into detergent molecules; and your finished products, the detergents, arc ter rible polluters. Today, when you wash a shirt, 19 times more phosphate goes down the drain than did in 1946. So k>03T 9E 2 T you're expending more energy to create a given amount of cleaning substance, and you're taking a heavier toll on the environment. The whole petrochemical industry that has sprung up since the war has had this kind of effect. I have one of their ads that shows a woman wearing all their products--nylons, vinyl boots, and so on. The whole argument of the ad is that if we stopped producing these syn thetics, we'd have nothing to wear. Well, we used to wear cotton and wool, and they covered us quite well. It reminds me of the science official in Washington I once had dinner with. We were talking about the possibility of banning DDT, and he was very much opposed to it, be cause he said there'd be no way to cope with insects. I asked him how lie thought we were able to grow' food before World War Two, when DDT was introduced. This was a novel idea that he hadn't thought of before. If you go right down the line, you find that technological changes have brought into play environ mentally and energetically more sense less means of production than the things they've displaced. PLAYBOY: In a 1970 cover story on the en vironmental crisis, Time quoted you as saying: "Once you understand the prob lem, you find that it's worse than you ever expected." Do you still feel that's true? COMMONER: Well, one of the things I meant was that new problems are always coming up, and they still arc. Did you read about the workers in a number of polyvinyl-chloride plants who have de veloped a very unusual type of liver can cer, and that it's now generally admitted that the disease is the result of exposure to materials in the plants? There is evidence that the cancer-producing agent is vinyl chloride, the raw material that's used to make polyvinyl chloride, and it's possible that some of the vinyl chloride is left in the finished product and leaks out of it when it's first used. That's frightening, because polyvinyl chloride is everywhere. Most tile floors are made of it, automobile upholstery is made of it, wallpaper is made of it, clothing is made of it, and I wish we knew where the wastes are really going. We've galloped ahead to produce this stuff in enormous amounts without this problem's ever having been sensed. The environment of the workplace has been terribly neglected, and we arc all paying the price with our health--the workers most of all. PLAYBOY: Wasn't there something similar recently in reports about lung diseases iffnong asbestos workers? COMMONER: Y'es, and not only in asbestos workers but.also in people who had ever w'orked, even briefly, with insulating materials, or- played as a child on a city dump where there was asbestos dust.. And remember the women in a The Soft Smoke. From generation to generation -- for nearly a century--one family of Danish craftsmen have passed on their own unique process of triple blending naturally ripened tobaccos. Now smoke the result. Imported Skallorna: mellow, fragrant, bite-free, soft. BETTE DAVIS: Winner of two Academy Awards. 'niiiinmnnnui 59 23818005 T ^ \v;itcli-dial factory in New Jersey who gon. where--as a result of legislative ac at all ill terms of human values. An q developed Irone cancer [mm working tion--throwaways have been abolished. example of that would be the introduc with glow-in-the-dark watch dials? Many There have been two results: a large tion of plastic packaging. Ten years ago. of these diseases don't show up until reduction in roadside litter and signifi if you went to a hardware store to liny > years later, and it becomes difficult to con- cant losses of revenue to out-of-state bot an electric plug, you would walk up to uect them with the occupational hazards tlers--with the slack being taken up in the counter and tell the guy behind it that caused them. increased sales by local bottlers. The that you'd like to have a plug. And lie PLAYBOY: If all you say is true, why have Oregon law has certainly hurt out-ol- would go to the wall, pull out a drawer, P* wc, as a society, employed such foolish, statc bottlers, but it has benefited both take out n plug, put it in a paper bag wasteful and sometimes even dangerous the local environment and die local and off you'd go. If you want to buy that means of production? Why were soap economy. plug now, you have to find it yourself companies so eager to replace their rela tively harmless product with detergents, which have polluted our waters and In most instances, synthetic products arc more profitable because they substi tute energy for human labor: in a cate, and you get it encased in plastic that you can't unwrap without a knife. I don't think that change has very much to do clogged our sewage systems? Why did Detroit Imild such big cars? Why did we substitute synthetics for cotton and wool? for instance, serving coflcc in a Styro foam cup rather than hiring a dish washer. Energy has been far cheaper with increasing the dignity of human labor. People enjoyed the exchange with the clerk, and his wasn't a very onerous Why did trucks take over from railroads as the dominant freight haulers? COMMONER: The answer lies in econom ics. Nearly all these changes in the char acter of production in the U. S. have come about because of corporate deci sions. Corporations decided to set up truck lines instead of investing in rail roads. Corporations decided to build those powerful auto engines and then spend hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising over the years to persuade the public that's what they needed. A good test case involves soap and de tergents, because the same companies that once made soap now make deter gents. Imagine this scenario at a soap company making soap (lakes. The en gineer comes in from the researchand-devclopment division and says, ` Gentlemen, we have a new product; it's than human labor, and it solves a lot of other problems. Those electrons come to work every Monday, they don't talk back, they don't go on strike, they don't complain about bad working conditions. But what nobody noticed until recently was that this was accompanied by a de crease in the efficiency of power utiliza tion. For instance, those manufacturing sectors which arc particularly incllicicm ill their use of electricity--chemicals, petroleum refining, paper and pulp, some primary metals--have grown more rapidly than the more efficient industrial sectors. It's significant that those indus tries at the bottom of the list, in terms of productive value and jobs created per unit of fuel consumed, recorded the high est gains ill profits in 1973. as compared with 1972, of any sector of the economy. PLAYBOY: But hasn't American industry task: it wasn't hurting his health. So here is a case where plastic, which is energyintensive. has been used not for human istic reasons but because it reduces labor costs and enhances profitability--and because it was to the interest of some petrochemical company to push everincreasing uses for new plastics. PLAYBOY: Why has the petrochemical in dustry plated so great an emphasis on plastics? commoner: It's a little bit like science fiction. You get the feeling that there is some self-duplicating plastic machine somewhere pushing all this stuff out-- the little gadget you seal up your bread with, the rings around the six-pack of beer. I did an analysis of the petrochemi cal industry to find out why, and the rea son is that by far the biggest cost in producing plastic or detergent or any called a detergent. It'll wash very well and it's easy on the hands. It's made out of petroleum instead of palm oil. That switched to using more energy and less labor because wages aie so high? Would you propose lowering wages in order to other petrochemical product is that of raw material. Labor usually represents one percent or so of the manufacturing means the price we pay for the raw mate rial won't fluctuate with the agricultural market. Furthermore, we've done a cost replace those electrons with human beings? COMMONER: Of course not. Work is both cost. If you can reduce the cost of mak ing the raw material from its petroleum bases, you can increase your profit a accounting on the manufacture of soap an important aspect of human experience great deal, and one way to do this is by and detergents and the profit margin is significantly bigger with detergents." I didn't sit in on any such discussion, hut and the basic source of all wealth. But increasing the use of energy, especially through automation, often reduces work utilizing the by-products created in the manufacturing process. The logic of this has led the industry to invent new prod it lias to be what happened. Corporate to meaningless, routine motion and. at ucts regardless of whether or not they're decisions are naturally based on the goal the same time, lakes work away from really needed by society--and then to of increasing profit. That's what corpo people. I think it's degrading to force create a market for these products. rations have been expected to do. and people to compete with energy for either Let's say that a committee of chemical they .usually succeed--or go out of busi ness. Synthetics have proved more profit able than cotton and wool, beer in the experience of meaningful work or for its rewards. 1 would pretty much turn tilings around: The wealth created engineers for a petrochemical company is designing a plant to produce ethylene, which they know can sell at a certain pull-top cans more profitable than beer by the work that people do should he di price. They know that one of the by in returnable bottles, and so on. PLAYBOY: H'hy are they more profitable? vided among them equitably, regardless products of ethylene production is pro of the cost of energy. In a number of pylene, and one thing they can do with COMMONER: The case of throwaway bot new technologies, of course, energy has this propylene is pipe it back and burn tles and cans is a special, and rather in had the effect of reducing what wc it in a reactor, which will save them the teresting, one. Their use came about might term undesirable human labor. cost of natural gas, and they figure out because of the efforts of large-scale bot On construction jobs, for example, yon the economic gain involved in burning tlers to take over the industry front the don't see people getting Intel backs push the propylene. Then along comes some small, independent operations wc used ing wheelbarrows full of concrete around up-and-coming engineer who describes a to see in most towns. As the small town anymore. What you sec instead is a con chemical reaction that has just been re bottlers were wiped out, the stuff had to crete mixer or truck come up and pump potted in which you can convert propyl be shipped longer and longer distances, concrete where you want it. I don't think ene to acrylonitrile and make acrylic and it obviously became uneconomical anyone would want to turn that particu fibers. They don't even need computers to ship empties all the way back to the lar pan of the clock back. to tell them they can make much mote big plants. On the other hand, there have been money by converting that propylene into The fascinating thing is that the ways in which energy has displaced acrylic fibers than they cm by burning 60 whole process has been reversed in Ore human labor that seem to make no sense it. And so, in order to make ethylene at 2383 8006 T W a high profit, they create a market lor made 2.4 billion dollars in profits last Service as an example of the inefficiency 0 anotlier petrochemical product, and the year. But it would have been a miracle if of Covernment-controlled industry. public lias a new synthetic kind of rug by accident all those decisions based on COMMONER: I do admit that at the pres that is advertised as progress. profitability had turned out to give the ent time we haven't got a shining exam PLAYBOY: And the petrochemical compa U. S. the kind of energy it needed, with ple of a better alternative. I hear that ct ny is using still more fossil fuels, because out polluting the environment, at a accusation--that Government bureauc now it's buying the natural gas it price people could afford to pay, where racy is inherently inefficient--every time wouldn't have had to purchase if it had burned the propylene. COMMONER: Yes. The petrochemical in and when they wanted it. And the mira cle didn't happen. On the contrary, what we're learning now is that there are I mention nationalization. A couple of years ago, when I first raised the issue of the inefficiency of trucks versus the effi dustry is a powerful parasite on the very serious contradictions between those ciency of railroads and pointed out that energy industry and the environment; it decisions and the well-being of the we were letting our railroads go to the competes with farmers for fuels such as country. You could go so far as to say the dogs, a Senator said to me, "But we propane and drives that price up, which American oil companies have put them don't know how to run railroads in this we finally pay for in higher food prices. selves in an antinational position. country." For a moment, you know, I The petrochemical people say they use PLAYBOY: Nationalization of an industry sort of sat there stunned. Here I was in only five percent of tire energy in the has always been a dreaded specter to the New Senate Office Building, sitting country, but it's really more like ten per American businessmen, politicians and in the august presence of a group of cent. because they also use fuel as raw most voters. Do you think that even United States Senators, in the most pow material. But it's very profitable. Let's something as dramatic as the energy crisis erful. technically advanced country in face it; Production of synthetic products could change attitudes enough to make the history of man, and a Senator tells is more profitable than production of nationalization a realistic possibility? me that we can't run railroads. What I natural ones. And what all this means is COMMONER: I think that if we can keep finally said to him was. "Isn't it time we that over the last 25 years, the economic our wits about us, and if Mr. Nixon and learned?" But that's what it comes down system of the U. S. has traded long-term his janissaries don't succeed in orches to; it's impossible for me to believe that stability for enhanced short-term gains trating any new panics over the energy there is no way of setting up a social en in profitability. And I think this raises situation, we'll see at least some discus terprise, let's say to run railroads, or to some crucial political questions--most sion of this in the next Presidential cam move mail, or to provide energy, that is profoundly, the question of whether or paign, Several Senators have already both efficient and publicly owned and not it makes sense to continue to govern advocated some type of Federal control operated. the use of fossil fuels and other resources over the energy industry and perhaps PLAYBOY: Aren't you really raising the in this country the way we have in the over the transportation system. 1 mean, larger question of whether profit-making past. Are we willing to allow the devel our transportation system is sick, and it's enterprises under private ownership can opment and availability of a resource as causing a large part of our energy and operate in the public interest--whedter, absolutely essential as energy to be gov erned by decisions based on the profitability of a single company or a environmental problems. Look at the airlines. Sixteen 747s have been in moth balls because they were too expensive to in the final analysis, capitalism can still hack it? COMMONER: Yes, I ant. But I think the single industry? fuel. Imagine the enormous capital and time has passed when people are going PLAYBOY: What would your answer be? human resources that went into building to be frightened by the idea of examin COMMONER: This is a political question, those 747s. And because there was no ing the assumptions under which our and my role as a scientist is to provide planning about energy, they were sitting productive system operates. You know, the information we need to answer it. idle in a country where many people are the design of the American economic Political questions have to be decided by still hungry and poorly housed. What system wasn't handed down on golden everyone. But knowing what I now know about (A) the importance of ener gy in our productive system, (B) the policy of energy development and use that has been generated as a result of private enterprise and (C) the problems that have arisen as a result, I think-- speaking as just one voter--that we should govern the use of energy in the United States according to public wel fare rather than private profit. What that means is that the energy industry needs to be owned and operated for and by the public. PLAYBOY: Are you advocating nationaliza tion of, say, the oil companies? COMMONER: We have to face that alterna tive. Let me put it this way: For the last generation, we've allowed oil executives to make their decisions--thousands of that says is that the organization of our transportation industry doesn't make sense. And the biggest railroad in the coun try is bankrupt. So it's safe to say that private industry hasn't done a good job of organizing the railroad system. Do you realize that the U. S. railroads, and one in Canada, arc the only major rail roads in the world that arc not national ized? It's well known that nationalized railroads are unprofitable and. indeed, the railroads in Europe and Japan lose money; the reason is that they carry pas sengers, which is not profitable. In this country, we might not have any passen ger service at all if it weren't for Amtrak, which is actually a subsidization rather than a nationalization of the railroads. But these countries have decided that tablets. It's nowhere written into the Constitution, as far as I know. There is no religious reason that it should be pro tected from examination. Can we really meet our basic needs, protect the envi ronment and use our energy efficiently under a capitalist organization of the economic system? It's time for us to ex amine that question without having any preconceived notions as to what the an swer is going to be. PLAYBOY: Without any preconceived no tions, what do you think the answer is? COMMONER: It seems to me that if every thing I've been talking about is true, then what we have to conclude is that the capitalist system has caused chaos. What do you call the energy crisis, if not chaos in the whole mechanism of pro separate decisions about looking for oil, they're willing to sacrifice the access of duction? You've got hundreds of thou what products to make, where and when private industry to railroads in return sands of people thrown out of work to build refineries, and so on--based sole for carrying passengers and freight in a because of the energy crisis and its ly on the criterion of what was good for way that is energetically more efficient phony shortages; you've got such high their stockholders. All these decisions and saves on environmental impact. I prices for gasoline and fertilizer that have been made by a small handful of think that's a reasonable trade-off. auto plants are closed down and farmers executives and industry committees. And PLAYBOY: But would nationalization real can't plan their planting. Householders they made some very smart decisions, ly help matters? Any opponent of yours are told to conserve electricity, and when g2 given their criterion: profit. Exxon would merely point to the U. S. Postal they do, the power companies want to 238180?" T ^ laise their rates because they're selling higher prices always place a heavier bur population grow as it has since 1946-- q less electricity. Then we're told that we den ou the poor, widening economic which would mean an increase of nearly have to stand for more air pollution inequalities. A subsidy for doing the 50 percent--but had improved the tech from cars and power plants because low- right thing would be somewhat better, nology of production sufficiently to keep sulphur oil has become too expensive. I but the resulting over-all increase in pollution levels down to where they gj read an article in The Neiu York Times taxes would also hurt die poor. were in 1946, instead of rising tenfold or financial section the other day which A basic thing to think about is this: In so. as they have actually done. said that the energy crisis may bring a private-enterprise system, no produc PLAYBOY: And how would you have several countries to the point of bank ruptcy. Now, that's chaos. I don't think anybody can escape the fact that the en tive action is undertaken unless the ex pected return is greater than the bank interest rate. In the natural world, how done that? COMMONER: In some of the ways we've been taiking about--for example, mov ergy crisis is a child of capitalism. PLAYBOY: But is there any less of an energy crisis, and environmental crisis, in ever, not all parts of the environmental system can produce at equal rates with out breaking down. For example, an ing freight and passenger traffic back onto trains, away from cars and trucks and planes; getting rid of one-way pop socialistic countries such as those in acre of Ozark pasture, kept in ecological bottles and ring-top cans; washing shirts Scandinavia, or in a Marxist society like balance, can produce much less food in soap instead of detergents. At any Russia's? COMMONER: Every time I lecture on cam pus, there is at least one student who than an acre of good Illinois cornland-- in fact, usually not enough to warrant investment. The result is that by not rate, I calculated that to keep pollution at 1946 levels with a 50 percent increase in population, we would have to im asks whether we can solve the problem using such ''marginal lands," we reduce prove the efficiency of technology rough under capitalism and another who the country's over-all capability to pro ly 30 percent. By, efficiency I mean a points out that the Soviet Union is hav duce food. I think that an ecologically measure of the amount of goods pro ing pollution problems, too. I think the sound economic system would have to duced per unit of pollution or per unit answer is that there doesn't yet seem to allow for the operation of different pro of energy consumed. That's an effort be in existence a model of an economic, ductive enterprises at very different rates that could be made--a 30 percent social and political organization that of return. No one has explained how improvement. will do just what we're looking for. It that could be done under a private- Now, if you approadi it from the op seems to me that the Soviet Union has enterprise system, except by means of posite direction--that we accept the thus far fallen into the pollution trap in subsidies--which would require, in my technological changes that have actually almost the same way that the United opinion, parallel action to sharply re occurred since 1946 but keep the pollu States has, because there you win the duce economic inequalities. tion level down by cutting back the pop Order of Lenin by producing cars, not PLAYBOY: In dealing with all these prob ulation--we would have had to reduce by keeping the water clean downstream lems, you stress the importance of the or the population by 86 percent. Now from the factory. ganization of the economic system. But we've come to the end of the science; At least that's the way it's been until now; but there are signs that this atti tude may be changing. I think the basic solution is to organize society to pro many experts--perhaps most notably Paul Ehrlich, in the August 1970 Playboy Inteiuiew and in his best-selling book The Population Bomb--have stated the from here on, it's a political choice. There is no scientific ground on which I can say it's better to undertake a 30 per cent improvement in technology than an duce goods in ways that benefit society as a whole. In theory, at least, that ought to be more in keeping with the design of only solution to the problems of pollu tion and energy shortage lies in popula tion control. You, however, have gone on 86 percent reduction in population. My own political choice is the first route. Pollution has been created by the people a socialist system than a capitalist one. All I say is that we have to find a way to do that, and find it soon. Neither the capitalist firm of United States Steel nor its Russian equivalent can make steel unless there is enough oxygen in the air for the steelworkers to breathe and the fires to burn in the furnaces. PLAYBOY: But isn't there an alternative to substituting public ownership for private enterprise? Couldn't the profit incentive be retained but altered in some way--for instance, by granting tax credits for developing ecologically sound products or environmentally sane manufacturing processes, so that it would be more profit able, as well as more socially desirable, to make good products? Or combine the carrot and stick approaches by imposition of criminal penalties on the executives of companies that pollute? record--both in speeches and in your book The Closing Circle--against this position. Why? COMMONER: The argument between me and the populationists is partly one of political approach. Take the situation in the United States, which is quite differ ent from the situation in the rest of the world. Clearly, if we could return to the density of population at the time the In dians had the country to themselves, I doubt that there would be any energy problems. All our productive activities are related to satisfying the needs of human beings; there really isn't any thing that we produce to not use, except maybe nuclear bombs--I hope. It's en tirely possible to take the position that one way to reduce the use of energy and the environmental impact is simply to who govern our productive enterprises, and I am unwilling to let them off the hook and saddle everyone in the country with the job of solving this problem by means of birth control. PLAYBOY: But isn't the country overpopu lated now? COMMONER: I know one ecologist who has concluded that the country is overpopulated because every time he goes on his favorite trail in the Rockies, he sees somebody. On the other hand, I know people who live in New York who enjoy the density of the population. They would enjoy it a lot more if conditions were more congenial; but people enjoy themselves a great deal in countries that are much more densely populated than our own--Holland, for instance. PLAYBOY: It's apparent, at any rate, that COMMONER: A number of economists are have fewer people around. I just don't the population growth rate in this coun working hard to develop some techniques believe that's the simplest way or the best. try is declining dramatically--that the for dealing with environmental pol PLAYBOY: Why not? population is beginning to stabilize. Even lution and energy problems within the COMMONER: Because we can maintain the so, doesn't what you're suggesting in the framework of the private-enterprise sys population at the present level and way of technological improvements to tem. I think they aren't likely to succeed change technology to reduce pollution conserve energy imply a need for some very easily, because all the solutions I and energy consumption. I made a scries rather basic changes in the American know of only cause new problems. For of computations, summarized in The lifestyle? example, a tax placed on polluters will Closing Circle, which run more or less COMMONER: Oh, certainly. A friend of gg only raise the price of their product, and along these lines: Suppose we had let the mine recently did a study on communes 23818008 T and concluded that communal living rc- COMMONER: Well, for instance, one of place, there isn't enough fuel to run the q duced energy- consumption--as a result the oldest dairies in St. Louis recently present types of reactors for more than of the members' desire to de-emphasize announced that in the interest of energy 25 or 30 years, so their resource lifetime ** the materialistic aspects of life. For ex- conservation, it was giving up its last is no greater than that for petroleum. In P* ample, instead of each household's buying milk-delivery routes. Milk delivery to fact, I diink that petroleum, considered its own washer and drier, the commune private homes may be wasteful, but so is world wide, would probably last longer members used laundromats. The laun sending a truckload of milk to the super than the uranium used to run nuclear dromat doesn't save on the energy used market and then having everybody get plants. So the nuclear-power advocates to operate the equipment; a certain into his or her private car and drive to say that we'll develop breeder reactors-- number of people's clothes will fill so the supermarket to pick up one contain in which there's a regeneration of fuel. many loads in a washer, wherever the er of milk. A much better system would That would stretch the resources very machine is located. But it does save on be to set up on every fourth or sixth cor considerably; but there are serious prob the energy needed to produce that num ner a refrigerated vending machine to lems with breeder reactors. ber of machines. Of course, there are al which a milk truck would deliver con PLAYBOY: Such as? ways some superfastidious persons who don't want somebody else's dirty clothes in their washer. But how about lawn mowers? PLAYBOY: How about lawn mowers? tainers of milk every other day. All the people in the neighborhood could trot over there and pick up their milk. You'd have to figure out the exact density of distribution points, to minimize the trips COMMONER: The first such reactor in the United States, the Fermi reactor, was a dismal failure; it broke down and hasn't operated since. We are only now in the process of designing a prototype breeder COMMONER: It has always struck me as a for the delivery truck but at the same reactor, and when you look at the track sign not of affluence but of stupidity for time make it possible for people to pick record of technical difficulties and down us to organize our society in such a way up the milk on foot. time compiled by the present reactors, that you have to have your own private PLAYBOY: Which, in the old urban neigh the chance of a breeder reactor's becom lawn mower as you have your own pri borhoods, is what they used to do--at ing a reliable source of energy in the next vate toothbrush. Why not a lawn-mower the corner store. 50 years is slim. And reliability, to my station in the neighborhood with, say, 25 COMMONER: I think it may turn out that mind, is an absolutely essential attribute lawn mowers available? It doesn't even an important way to save energy would of any energy system. have to be that formal; several families be, insofar as possible, to re-create neigh Look at it this way: If your furnace at could simply go in together and buy a borhoods, with the local store and the home breaks down because of some flaw, lawn mower. They'd save a lot of money, local laundromat and the local tavern. you can probably put on more sweaters as well as the energy required to build PLAYBOY: Taverns save energy? or move into a motel until it gets fixed. all those mowers--production of which COMMONER: Certainly. You could get rid But consider what the unreliability of is going up something like 15 percent of the whole beer-can-and-botlle-produc- fuel supply can do, for example, to corn annually. Some families I know have tion-and-disposal problem by having production in the Midwest. The old- done something like that with a station people drink at the corner tavern, as fashioned way of harvesting corn was to wagon. What you often need in a second they do in Britain. I rather imagine their let it dry on the ear; the sun did the car is something that will lug junk trash problem is less severe than ours, work, without using any artificial energy around, but you don't need it very often. and I wouldn't argue that the British supply. Then it was picked and placed, So these people went together and enjoy beer drinking less than we do. An still on the ear, where the air could get at bought a communal station wagon. other interesting side light is that one re each kernel, in an open-air crib to com PLAYBOY: Which they could also use in a searcher has come out with a statement plete drying. One of the recent develop car pool for trips to the supermarket? that one cause of alcohol problems in this ments in corn production, though, has COMMONER: Sure. Shopping is a very im country is die fact that people drink at been the introduction of combines diat portant [actor in energy use. When 1 was cocktail parties or at home instead of in pick, husk and strip the kernels from the a kid in Brooklyn, you could buy any taverns, where there is a certain sense of ears in one operation. In other words, daily need--food, drinks, clothes, lolli community. But that's another problem. the combine produces a big bin of moist pops--within easy walking distance, five Just sticking to the energy part of it, grain that you have to dry artificially if blocks or so. Nobody needed a car to there are many things people can do at it isn't going to rot. So you put it in a take care of all of these things. Well, home. Bathing Japanese style, for exam hot-air drier fueled with propane gas, today, people live farther away from ple, was apparently designed as a way to and the result is that corn production in stores; you can have all the good will save the fuel required to warm water. the Midwest in recent years has become and mother-earthy attitude in the world, The youngest and cleanest goes in the totally vulnerable to having a sufficient but if the nearest grocery is five miles water first, and on up the line, using the supply of propane gas available during away, you drive there. A great deal of gasoline is burned simply to enable people to get the food they need from day to day. One answer to that problem, same tub. People used to do that in this country, too, in the old days of the Satur day-night bath--before we had hot run ning water. When you had to heat the the right week, in the right place and at a price the farmer can afford. If lie's un certain about being able to get it, or to pay for it--the price, remember, has incidentally, is another communal ven ture--the food cooperative. People usu ally set them up to save money rather water on a wood stove, you were much more conscious of the energy required. But whatever means of conservation we tripled this past year--he just may decide this is the year to retire, or to take his land out of production for a while, or to than energy, but they conserve that, too. adopt, we'll need some form of energy to plant some other crop. All because the Once or twice a week, some member of heat that bath water--energy that some supply of energy he requires is not relia the cooperative takes a station wagon or day we won't be able to get from petro ble. If the future farmer is told to rely a truck and goes down to the wholesale markets to buy staples, frtiits, vegetables leum or even coal, because they just won't be available anymore. on electricity from a nuclear reactor to dry his corn, and that blacks out at the and meats, and then returns them to a PLAYBOY: What's tbe solution, then? Is it wrong time, there goes the crop. neighborhood distribution point. You further development of nuclear power, PLAYBOY: What about the safety of nu just go in and pick up your order. as the Atomic Energy Commission seems clear power plants? You could adapt that system to other to be telling us? COMMONER: There are very serious envi things, too. COMMONER: The AEC people say that, ronmental problems with present nuclear 08 PLAYBOY: What other things? but I think they're wrong. In the first reactors, and those with breeder reactors i t i j- y y 23818009 will be far worse. No one really knows what to do with high levels of radio active waste, and the problems we have now would be many times multiplied if we got to the point where we were de pending on nuclear reactors for power. I think that would be intolerable. More than that, breeder reactors involve the use of plutonium, which is the most dan gerous radioactive pollutant there is; for various technical reasons, it raises hor rifying problems of control. PLAYBOY: Then why is the AEC pushing so hard for nuclear power? COMMONER: You have to remember the origins of the AEC. Our entire atomicenergy program, on which billions of dollars have been spent, was developed not because of any real concern about energy but as a way of putting a peace able cloak on the development of nuclear weapons. People have forgotten that the first power reactor in the United States was built as a prototype for a power plant to go into submarines. In fact, the Government was unable to convince pri vate industry to build nuclear power plants until it horsed around with the subsidies enough, and until the price of other fuels rose enough, to make it eco nomically worth while. You know, one of the significant things in this field is that when the pri vate power companies were being per suaded by the Government to build nuclear power plants, they naturally turned to their insurance companies for liability coverage in case of accident-- and no group of private insurance com panies was willing to underwrite the risk. As a result, the Price-Anderson Act-- which in effect gave them the insur ance free as a subsidy from the Govern ment--was passed. The Government, so to speak, put the safety of its own citizens on the line and guaranteed that whatever happened, it would pay the bill. Nuclear power plants were an item the AEC wanted to sell, and it did every thing it could in terms of Government subsidies, pressures and persuasion. The people who are pushing nuclear power, who say we're going to be able to rely on it, are walking blind into a cave full of tigers. No, that's the wrong image: They're leading us blind into a cave full of tigers, and I think it's totally irresponsible. PLAYBOY: Well, then, what is the answer-- or is there one? COMMONER: Yes, there is. Any sensible examination of the facts about global energy supplies, and of the laws of biolo gy and physics, tells us that the only logi cal way in which to develop our energy system in the United States is to make it nearly entirely dependent upon solar energy, in various ways. All the energy on the earth comes from the sun--most of it as visible light and some as ultra violet and infrared radiation. There arc several natural means of trapping solar energy: in organic materials through photosynthesis, for example. We have used photosynthetic products, such as wood, as fuels for years, but that process can be made more efficient by, for exam ple, producing charcoal from the wood and using it in powdered form to oper ate high-pressure boilers. Wind is a form of solar energy, too--a hurricane has more energy in it than most atomic bombs--and windmills can be very useful. In many places, a wind mill can produce enough energy to take care of a farm; a generation or so ago in this country, they did. You might say the windmill has become a victim of the overcentralization of our economy: for a time, it was simply impossible to buy one in the United States. Now, though, there are two or three companies either build ing or importing them. You can use a windmill to generate electricity and store it in batteries or to pump water uphill and then have it run downhill to produce electricity. Hydroelectric power comes from solar energy, too, you see. You get water power by using the force of falling water to turn a generator. In order to fall, the water has to he first lifted, and it's lifted naturally by being evaporated by the sun, condensed in clouds, and then raining down the mountainside. In other words, the sun raises the water, and when you lower it from the mountain, you run it over a dam and produce power. PLAYBOY: But aren't most potential dam sites already in use? Isn't there a limit to the new hydroelectric power that can be produced? COMMONER: There is a limit to sites that are suitable for large-scale, centralized operations. The power companies have simply built bigger and bigger power plants, looking for big rivers between high mountains that you could dam up to get a high water drop. You need that to produce large, commercially profita ble amounts of electricity. But there is falling water all over the country; falling slightly, but enough to generate electric ity. I haven't seen it, but I'm told that the West Germans have developed a gen erator that can be driven by the water moving in a swift stream and will pro duce enough electricity for a farmhouse without the need for a dam at all. PLAYBOY: But all of this--windmills, charcoal burners, water wheels--sounds rather quaint, not the sort of thing one would think of in developing any tech nology on a wide enough scale to combat the energy crisis. COMMONER: We all have this mindset that technology requires some huge shiny apparatus presided over by a man in a white coat, because we've artificially equaled technology with bigness and complexity. But you know, a lever is an example of technology; so is a knife. I consider a windmill that pumps water up to a farm pond on a hill, connected to a pipe running down past a little gen erator to a lower pond, a perfectly de cent piece of technology. It will do a job just as well as hooking into a power line with a nuclear reactor at the other end will, if the ponds are big enough to pro vide a reservoir to account for the intermittency of the wind. The electrons that go into a washing machine don't know if they've come from a shiny nuclear-power reactor or some creaky old windmill; they're the same electrons. And that windmill is being fed by a natural energy pool, the wind, and isn't going to disturb the ecol ogy one whit. Some of the energy in the wind will end up in your toaster, but then the heat from the toaster will go out into the air and eventually dissipate into space. All you're doing is interact ing with the energy system that comprises the weather. Solar energy can be captured on this scale without any noticeable eco logical disturbance. PLAYBOY: Still, all the things you've men tioned are basically old forms of technol ogy. Are there no new ways to utilize solar energy? COMMONER: Yes, of course. One particu larly interesting proposal has been made by Clarence Zener, a very good physicist, using the temperature differential in the tropical oceans. You can get power when you have a high temperature and a low temperature, through thermoelectric ef fect. Zener would float devices in tropical oceans, where the natural temperature differential is greatest, which would pro duce, he estimates, about 60 billion kilo watts--or about 30 times the energy consumed by the U. S. in 1970. Now, of course, there are things like airplanes that don't run on electricity. So Zener woidd use some of that electric power to electrolyze salt water, yielding hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen burned with pure oxygen is, of course, an ecologically perfect fuel, yielding only water on com bustion. The ecological impact of all this, Zener thinks, would be to lower the temperature of the surrounding ocean by one degree centigrade. That might have some ecological effects, but they should be minor ones. At any rate, there'd be no fuss, no fumes. There are also ways of concenlraling solar energy. Normally, after all, the sun doesn't set fire to the earth. But remem ber your childhood experiments with magnifying glasses? If you can collect light through a glass and concentrate it down to a much smaller area, you get enough heat to burn a hole in a piece of wood. There's a big curved mirror up in the Pyrenees that takes advan tage of that principle to achieve temper atures high enough to melt steel. And a number of years ago, the Russians built a steam engine in which steam was gg 23S18010 T >* generated simply by mounting a mova- quelae of these technical developments. research piogram in the chicken house. q ble mirror tliat followed the sun's daily Perhaps we'd better wait on that one. The outcome, not surprisingly, was that path and concentrated its rays on the PLAYBOY: Some kind of dramatic demon the report proposed that the future of the boiler. Tliere's a project being devcl- stration may be needed, though. Why is United States lies in the development oped in Texas that does the same thing it that the public hasn't heard about the of nuclear energy. What is even more Uj in a different way. and some scientists in possibilities of developing solar energy? disturbing is that the AEC had in its Arizona are working on a project using COMMONER: It's a scandal. Ralph Nader hands the report of a subpanel on solar energy to melt sodium and get likes to make the crack that if we put a solar energy which concluded that solar high-pressure steam. Their proposal is to depletion allowance on the sun. then let power could easily compete with nuclear cover some number of square miles in somebody own it, solar energy would be reactors as a source of electricity. When Arizona with sodium-filled pipes that developed. And there's something to I tried to get a copy of that report, will generate enough electric power to that, although I'm not sure it's the whole through the good offices of Senator take care of a good part of the country. answer. One factor, as I've already James Abourezk of South Dakota, it But sve haven't talked about all the shown you, is that a very important way turned out to be quite a job. Neither his solar-energy devices for which the tech to use solar power is to do it on a small staff nor Senator Jackson's staff nor nology now exists, like the windmill. scale, and that flies in the face of our Peter Flanigan, a Presidential assistant, There are certain major uses of energy concept of technology. It's not highly could get the report from the AEC. in this country that could be taken care profitable, either, because I rather doubt It was finally produced when Senator of within three to five years with no you would sell a homeowner a new Abourezk wrote the AEC a letter citing technical hoo-haw at all. I'm referring model of solar heater every year. There's the Freedom of Information Act. to residential heat. Solar devices to heat no planned obsolescence in it, so it PLAYBOY: You mean the AEC tried to houses have been on the market since won't become economically valuable ex suppress the report? the Twenties. Not long ago, I drove cept insofar as the cost of fuel becomes COMMONER: Apparently. That sort of from Miami Beach to Miami Interna high. I'm sure that's why solar heaters thing happens all the time. When the tional Airport, and along the road, every went out of style in California and AEC or any other agency wants to do a third house--they were older homes-- Florida: because fuel was so cheap. report on anything complicated, it asks had a solar hot-water heater mounted on PLAYBOY-. But fuel isn't so cheap anymore. some of its staff or a group of outside the roof. I hey consisted of a glass panel, COMMONER: True, but if wc simply use experts to break down the project in usually four by nine feet, connected to a the economic weapon to force a shift to different topics. Each of these sub water tank. They work by the greenhouse from fossil fuels to solar heaters, it's the committees turns in a report, which then principle: the radiant energy is trapped poor who will get it in [he neck. Because becomes the property of the AEC, or by the glass and absorbed by black-paint as long as you can't afford to buy the whatever agency we're talking about, ed metal pipes full of water, anti the hot solar heater to warm your house, then and the agency can usually do with it water is stored in the tank, and that's you have to buy fuel--at ever higher what it wishes. Or the agency can turn that. Devices of that sort could probably prices. What I'm afraid of is that solar over a complete report and the President be built for a few thousand dollars to energy is going to be exploited insofar as can ignore it or suppress it himself. provide all--or let's say 90 percent--of it is profitable, and we'll be backing into PLAYBOY: As lie did with the reports of the space heating and hot-water heating it without developing a comprehensive the commissions on marijuana, pornog for a home, even as far north as Boston. program. That would be better than the raphy and population? If you had a snowstorm, of course, you'd situation we're in now, but a far cry COMMONER: At least that information got be in trouble for a while: you'd have to from what needs to be done. out to the public. But in September of use an auxiliary energy source. PLAYBOY: How can you be so sure that 1972. a Presidential commission estab PLAYBOY: What about maintenance? solar energy is the right path to pursue lished by Mr. Nixon to make recommen COMMONER: Such a device, with no mov when many students of the problem seem dations about what should be done ing parts, might last the entire life of the to disagree with you? A five-year research about the nation's number-one health house with only periodic cleaning. Inci program voted by our own House of problem--heart disease--turned in a dentally. about a quarter of the energy Representatives, for example, has been long and detailed report outlining steps used in this country is for residential attacked as unwarranted. to be taken to improve research and consumption of this sort, so this could COMMONER: I don't see how anyone can treatment, and the President refused to make an enormous contribution. My conclude that solar energy isn't worth issue that report. own very small contribution is that I've developing when every one of the tech PLAYBOY: Why? built a solar heater on our farm. It's a niques that can be used has already been COMMONER: Probably because it recom very simple idea--I'd read about it some demonstrated on a small scale. All that's mended a fairly expensive heart-disease- place, about a device built once in needed is economic development. As for prevention program. But the Scientists' Argentina that not only produces the opposition, you hare to notice who's Institute for Public Information--1 energy but stores it right in the solar de doing the opposing: the home builders, served as chairman of its board--wrote vice itselh It's a box filled with black the energy industry, the Nixon Adminis to the President and requested that the wax that melts in the heat of the sun, so tration and the Atomic Energy Commis report be published. Wc just heard from that all you do is run in cold water, cir sion. Don't forget that in plumping for the White House that, a year and a half culate it through copper tubing laid in solar energy we're bucking an enor l ue. the report is going to be published. the wax and it comes out hot. mously powerful, well-heeled atomic- That is one of the scientific community's PLAYBOY: As a dramatic demonstration, energy machine. Don't forget that the oil main responsibilities to society--to pry wotdd it be possible, say, to heat the companies now own not the sun but ura information loose and sec that it gets to White House with solar energy? nium supplies. Don't forget that when the people who need it. COMMONER: Yes. I think so. That would the energy crisis surfaced to the point The whole thing gives me a sense of be a very interesting idea. But. tome to where even Mr. Nixon noticed it, he ap elrjn vn. Way back during the fallout think about it. considering the present pointed Dixy Lee Ray, head of the Atom flap of the Fifties, when the Atomic En occupant of the White House, if any ic Energy Commission, to lead the task ergy Commission was hatching a lot of solar device were put in there, he might force drawing up a research plan for the crackpot schemes to get peaceful uses out begin to call himself the Sun King- You energy future of the United States. That's of nuclear bombs, there was a thing 72 always have to look at the political se like asking the chief fox to work out a called Project Chariot, a proposal to 23818011 T > blast a harbor on the Alaskan coast. rience I had during the fight against fall character of our productive ana political q Someone tapped the AEC on the shoul out, when I used to turn up every other systems. Isn't there some way of having der and said, you know, there might be night, it seemed, in some church both economic and political democracy ecological problems; there might be Es- lecturing about the dangers of strontium in the same society? I'm not willing to > kimos around there, caribou, and so 90. Often enough, halfway through the accept the notion that it can't be done gj forth. So the AEC arranged with the Uni talk, somebody would say, "You mean because it hasn't been done. With that versity of Alaska and a couple of other we're poisoning our neighbor's well?'' altitude, we wouldn't have had the ** institutions for a series of investigations Once the people understood that, there American Revolution. We're really in 0* that were done by sonic very good ecolo was no need for an injection of morality the same situation today, where we have gists. About a year later, we here in the to spur them to action. The conscience to think openly about the ways in which St. Louis unit of the Scientists' Institute was already there, the moral conviction we want to govern the resources we've for Public Information became inter that you do not poison your neighbor's got, so that there will be no need for ested in the status of the thing and well. It's the same thing now with the crises, for shortages, for high prices--and we wrote to the AEC for information. energy crisis. People don't believe it's for imposing heavier burdens on the They answered that they had a report on fair for a few individuals or companies poor. it bur they couldn't release it. So we to make money while the whole country PLAYBOY: Are you advocating a kind of said, well, tell us who worked on it, and is suffering. You may be surprised in the fortress America in the energy sphere--a diey sent us the names and addresses of future, as the facts become clear, to see return to self-reliance on our own natu the ecologists. We wrote to them and what good people Americans are. ral resources, with less emphasis on trade asked for copies of their reports, which PLAYBOY: You don't, then, see us racing with the rest of the world? were literally being suppressed by the against some inevitable doom? COMMONER: By no means. I'm advocating AEC. Well, the reports showed that COMMONER: No, I don't. Obviously, that we be less dependent on Arab oil, there were completely unanticipated and you've got to be an optimist if you've because we absolutely must shift over to very serious ecological effects involved in had the experience, as many of us have, solar energy. But trade with other na the carrying out of Project Chariot. So of taking on the AEC and winning. As tions can be very useful both for them we summarized those reports in our mag long as you share what you learn in sci and for us. Take the implementation of azine, Environment, and really spilled entific investigation, there are millions solar energy, for example. There is no the beans on the AEC. To make a long of people who, given the truth, have the reason why the crash program to develop story short, the whole project was killed. conscience and the conviction to take the every aspect of it has to take place only But today, they still seem to be doing it-- necessary action. I consider myself enor in the United States; there's no reason still suppressing reports. mously lucky to have been able to use why good solar heaters developed in Ni PLAYBOY: If Government agencies, even my scientific and technical knowledge as geria shouldn't be used here. As a matter the President, are suppressing informa a tool with which to inform the public. of fact, one of the intriguing tilings tion, and private industry has no incen To me that has been a very rewarding about solar energy is, as I've said, that it tive to support the development of solar experience, because, in fact, people lis can be exploited on a small scale. There energy, do you think we'll ever see it ten. Twenty years ago, when I and a few fore, it's highly applicable to developing fully exploited in this country? others began talking about environmen countries. It's my hope that they will, in COMMONER: Oh, yes. I'm optimistic. We tal problems, we were considered ridicu fact, lead the way, exert technological hnvc to develop it. And it's just the kind lous kooks, modern Jeremiahs. But we leadership. It's a great opportunity for of experience I've had with the Atomic kept at it, and now people understand. nations that are behind in the race Energy Commission in the past that PLAYBOY: How long do you think it will toward the wrong technological goals-- makes me hopeful. One way faolitical take us to get on the right energy track? countries whose economies are not de power has been maintained in this coun COMMONER: Let's say, just for the sake of pendent on energy-wasteful factories try is by keeping things secret; that's the argument, that in the next election we producing energy-wasteful products--to lesson of the Pentagon papers and of choose a President committed to a na get ahead, to get on another track. I Watergate. And the way in which those tional effort to shift from fossil fuels to hope they move in that direction and of us in the scientific community have had an impact on public policy is by de stroying that secrecy, by destroying that exclusivity of knowledge. That's exactly what happened with the test-ban treaty. The AEC, the people in the military, knew damn well that nuclear war was an impossible risk. Either that or they were unbelievably incompetent. But they were free to act as though building up nuclear weapons were possible because that secret was theirs exclusively. When those of us in the scientific community sniffed out the facts about strontium 1)0 and other forms of radioactive pollution, broke through the secrecy and got those facts through to the public, all that changed. It was an aroused public opin ion that led to the test-ban treaty, and I think that will happen again with solar energy. The people of this country are able to sec where problems originate, once they have enough information to understand them. solar energy, so that in If)7(i we're ready to launch this shift. I'm no expert on this, but I know a little bit about how these engineering things go. and it seems to me that in 20 to 25 years, we could be three quarters of the way there. In the meantime, we know we have enough fossil fuels to keep us going while we're building up this new energy system. We could easily supply all of our fuel needs for that period by taking oil from the continental United States and mining coal in reasonable ways. At the same time, we could be cutting back on the demand for energy by improving the ef ficiency with which we use it: shifting traffic from cars and trucks to railroads, using natural materials instead of syn thetic ones wherever possible. In other words, part of the national program would be a planned use of fossil'fuels to tide us over. The most important thing, overall, is the need to re-examine all the assump show us the error of our --ays. Somebody has to. PLAYBOY: Isn't that what you're trying to do yourself? COMMONER: Sure. That's why I'm doing this interview. It's absolutely imperative that the people of the United States-- and the whole world--understand that the only rational way to assure futureenergy supplies and, at the same time, end our suicidal assault on the envi ronment is to undertake a massive de velopment of solar energy. Any other alternative would enormously worsen our environmental problems, create dan gers such as plutonium radiation and [Ki te lit ia I nuclear-power-plant explosion, even risk wars over foreign oil supplies. In other words, failure to understand-- and act upon--the ecological, economic and political imperatives that push us toward developing solar energy will end in disaster. It's as simple--and as cru cial--as that. ,4 My mind always goes back to an expe tions that we've kept hidden about the a 2381Q012 T