Clammy Logic

This year, the crisis was less dramatic only in that it was not condensed into a single Monday; but it developed in no less adverse weather and it was compounded by the coal strike.

The gullible souls who thought that US coal production could really be increased by 50% in 7 years, or that it was safe to use all that coal, probably also thought the UMW was more reliable than the sheiks of Arabia.

Now they know better or do they? Once again the media censored the story of how the country made it through 3 months of a coal strike in the winter. Once again nuclear power lent a helping hand, pulling more than its theoretical weight (now 12% of electric capacity): It is there when the coal piles are frozen and the miners on strike. Almost all of the 67 plants have been running at near capacity; and there would be a hundred of them if they hadn't been sabotaged by the wreckers and obstructionists.

Among the utilities that have been generating more than 40% of the demand by nuclear power are Central Maine, Central Vermont, Commonwealth Edison (Illinois), Con Ed (New York), Iowa El.Co., Jersey CP&L, Northern States Power, Portland (Ore.) G.E.Co., Power Auth. State N.Y., Vermont E.P.Co., and Wisconsin Electric the lastnamed's Point Beach units 1 and 2 on line with 99.8% and 96.3% availability. Not to mention SMUD, which supplied almost all of its output by nuclear power to Sacramento, Calif., including the lights by which Gov. Brown and his packed energy commission are working overtime to outlaw safe power in California.

Nobody, of course, has ever claimed that nuclear power can, in the foreseeable future, supply all of US electricity (let alone energy). But neither can coal or any other single source. Both coal and nuclear are needed.

Not everybody agrees. The Clamshell Alliance and other graduates from America's best boutiques and discotheques believes it can all be done by sunbeams and conservation.

That, we take it, was how they survived the crippling cold and the two Boston blizzards. The second time round, Boston lost its power because the gale ripped a roof off a generating station. That same gale, we take it, kept the Clampersons cozy by running their windmills, for windmills are less vulnerable than central power plants, preaches guru Lovins. And motor traffic was banned from Boston streets, just as the clammies advocate, if only for a few days. None but the most hardboiled despoilers of nature, resource rapists and corporate pigs crawled back into their automobiles when it was over. The clammies, we take it, will use solmobiles, an idea too nebulous to be senseless, which in itself should qualify it for a major government research grant.

And conservation creates jobs, as anyone who watched the snowstorms in the Northeast will confirm. This economic law will again be demonstrated if the UMW remain on strike. A few hundred thousand autoworkers in Michigan will be among the first to appreciate the blessings of energy conservation, and the number of energy pigs laid off elsewhere would rapidly reach millions.

The idea of energy conservation creating jobs is one of the profound wisdoms discovered by the de industrializers, and its logic is reminiscent of their mentor Jimmy Carter. Last month this great crusader for human rights held up Yugoslavia as a model of "liberty and freedom." About one year ago, a citizen of that country was sentenced to one year in jail for asserting that Yugoslavs had no freedom of speech.