The Energy Domino

From South-East Asia to Portugal, the dominoes are falling. And one of the dominoes is the policy of detente. The Cold War is alive and well in Moscow; detente is a hallucination suffered only in Washington. It amounts to giving the Soviets sophisticated technology and to advance them the money to "buy" it with. True, the Soviets are not likely to risk suicide in a nuclear holocaust; but only because they know that the step-by-little-step method is less costly and more effective.

America's energy situation has grown more precarious. Oil imports have not drastically changed since pre-embargo days; the quadrupled price is ruining the balance of payments; and America's military posture has sadly deteriorated. The only solution, we are told, is energy conservation. And the only way to achieve it is to legislate it.

How much conservation can America take? The answer will be provided when the Arabs and their Soviet buddies call the next embargo. We will then see how much conservation America will have to take.

In the meantime, free market forces will conserve more energy than coercion. There is, after all, no law against throwing jewels out of the window; but for some strange reason, people don't do it. Decontrol of energy prices and an end to government meddling would do more than work wonders for conservation: It would mobilize America's abundant energy resources.

But decontrol would hurt the poor, says Kennedy, Rockefeller and other paupers. The way to help the country is to spend government money as if it were going out of style. (Which it probably is.) Print a few billion here and a few billion there; tax the producers and give to the spongers.

And whom is that policy hurting? Senator Abourezk? Congresswoperson Abzug? Or the guy who made $10,000 a year before he lost his job?

We are under no illusions that Congress will choose the unpopular road of decontrol. For one thing, it is too busy turning the CIA into a Sunday School and setting up more agencies to protect us poor idiots from responsibility.

But when this road has ended in disaster, let it not be said that no other road was open.