ECHOES AND UPDATES

The Ofness of Am was extracted from what I thought was a verbatim report of Friedman's convocation address in the Dartmouth Review. Alas, a smarter man would have recognized it as a spoof, but I fell for it. I must therefore retract, with apologies, my introductory remark that Friedman is an intellectual giant and hereby affirm that he is not one.

February's editorial on Shell and Chevron moved a retired Chevron executive to point out that if the company were to stop working for Angola, others would immediately take over, and that would be poor service to the stockholders.

But (I replied) the argument "If we don't do wrong somebody else will do it for us" was used in trading with Nazis and Soviets, and here it is again. For one thing, a strong America (not the America of today) might set an example that others would not wish to under-mine. And if they did, let them. Let the Soviets or the French or whoever be tainted with supplying the money for the oppressors and let them take the risk of losing their property when Savimbi confis-cates it as war booty and reparations, as I hope he will one day. As for the stockholders, they hoped to make money on this shabby activity, and if they lose it, I pity them no more than If they had hoped to make money by drug peddling or any other shady deal.

Like the rest of the nuclear industry, the Amer. Nucl. Soc. is reluctant to compare the safety and environmental gentleness of nuclear power to fossils and hydro, since this might offend the utilities, the primary employers of their members. So ingrained is this attitude with its Public Communications Dept. that it cannot con-ceive of one who breaks the taboo as being their member. Reporting on the Morton Downey Show debate, the Jan. 89 ANS News denotes the pro-nuclear side as "The two members and Petr Beckmann . . .' (I have been a member since the mid-70s.)

The faster growth of electricity compared with all energy [AtE Feb 88, Feb 89] is not limited to America. The IAEA (Intl. Atomic En. Agcy.) estimates the following growths for 1987-2005:

N.America, Industrialized Pacific, W. Europe: energy +1.2%-1.9%, electricity 2.2%-3.1%. All industrialized countries: en. +1.4%-2.0%, el. + 2.3-3.1%; for the developing countries electricity growth win be double the energy growth of 2.2% to 3.3%.