HOW TO MAKE AND INSTALL YOUR OWN INSULATION...FOR 5? OR LESS A SQUARE FOOT!

Enlarge Image Image Gallery MOTHER researchers grind those papers...the finished product...main fire test in process...and fire test of ""sprinkled"" cellulose. PHOTOS BY J. WEILAND

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Sometimes it's going to happen for the "right" reason (genuine dwindling reserves of the easily tapped fossil fuels on which our society has become so desperately hooked). Sometimes it's going to happen for the "wrong" reasons (Carter's fiasco of massive new government meddling and crushing taxes masquerading as an energy "plan", say, or profiteering by the utilities, multinational corporations, and others who supply the oil, gas, coal, electricity, etc., that we all use). And sometimes it's going to happen for both the right and the wrong reasons at the same time.

But for whatever reason or combination of reasons it takes place, there's no question about what's going to happen: The price of all the "traditional" (fossil fuel and fossil fuelderived) energy you use from now on is going to go in just one direction ... UP!

Oh, there'll be welcome little short-term reversals of that basic trend from time to time. (Right now, for instancethanks to new production from Britain's North Sea fields, Mexico's sudden exports of oil, the opening of the North Slope in Alaska, increased pumping in Saudi Arabia last summer, and some other factors-the world is mildly awash in petroleum, and there's some rather frantic oil and gasoline price cutting going on behind the scenes.)

For all practical purposes, though, these fleeting discombobulations can be ignored (after, of course, you've taken maximum advantage of them whenever they present themselves). Keep your eye on the basic trend. And that very basic and very, very strong trend—now, and for as far into the future as you can possibly care to peer—is for the price of all "traditional" forms of energy to rise and rise and to keep on rising.

Then again, there's nothing engraved on—a stone tablet anywhere that says you have to remain a big-time captive customer of the fossil fuel industry in the first place.

You might, for example, build and move into an Andy Davis-type underground house (see The Plowboy Interview in MOTHER NO. 46) ... and then sail completely through the coldest winter in over 100 years (the winter of 1976-77) on only $1.29 worth of heating fuel the way Andy just did.

Or you might have David Wright, who now lives in a 93% heating and cooling self-sufficient home of his own design (see The Plowboy Interview in MOTHER NO. 47) draw up a set of plans for your family.

You could even have Jesse J. Savell (See "Here's a Passively Heated and Cooled House That You Can Afford ... and Will Want") put up one of his energymiser dwellings for you.

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