ACID RAIN AND FLAWED LOGIC

The Silent Alliance. Canadian support for acid Rain Controls in the United States and the Campaign for Additional Electricity Exports is a long tide for a short book by J.M. Friedman and M.S. McMahon (78pp., hdbd., $8.95), just published by Regnery Gateway (360 W. Superior, Chicago, IL 60610), who have published so many good books, such as the superb Coercive Utopians by R. and E. Isaac [AtE Jan.84).

But this one does them little credit. The authors prove that Canada lobbies for acid rain controls in the US (who doubts it?), and that with its rich energy resources, including a highly developed nuclear industry, Canada would profit from electricity exports to the US (and who doubts that?); also that an acid rain prevention program would cost a lot of money (a real revelation). It follows inexorably that all this is linked in a conscious and covert Canadian policy, and that the US must pass protectionist legislation against electricity imports from Canada, or Canadian employment would be created at the expense of US jobs. [That's always the trouble with trade, and only half of it: the other half comes with the return exports, which create American employment at the expense of Canadian jobs.) Moreover, "the US may be coerced economically into financing Canadian nuclear power plant expansion" and "the US may become the depository of Canada's nuclear waste."

Paranoia is the dunces substitute for thinking. Let's hope for more good titles from Regnery Gateway erasing this slip.