The Plowboy Interview

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It is now quite apparent that the days of unlimited and constantly increasing consumption of fossil fuels are "all over but the shoutin' ".

We maul and tear whole states with monster shovels, feed the coal we uncover to voracious power plants that belch out sun-darkening clouds of pollution, distribute the electricity that results through thousands of miles of ugly pylons and cables . . . and still watch our cancerous cities suffer an increasing number of "brown outs" and complete power failures each year.

Even the major oil companies (which have a vested interest in making us believe that the wild ride can go on and on) now ration their dwindling stocks of natural gas and predict that the world's reserves of petroleum will be exhausted in 30 to 50 years.

Clearly, something must be done . . . and most concerned environmentalists find it difficult to believe that the "something" is the development of nuclear power. At least not as long as the AEC stupidly continues to promote the fission process with its built-in dangers of runaway reactors, thermal and radioactive pollution. And fusion? Well, yes . . . maybe. But that approach to the controlled and sustained harnessing of nuclear energy is still only a dream.

Damn it, what we (and the planet) really need—first and foremost—is less instead of more: less human population and less per-capita consumption of power and the things wemanufacture with it. Secondly—and just as important—we must instigate an immediate crash program of research into ways of utilizing solar, wind, water, wave and other natural sources of the energy we do use. And that research must be relentlessly directed away from the development of centralized, capital-heavy, tightly controlled, "dirty" energy systems . . . and toward the nurturing of decentralized, inexpensive, controlled-by-individuals-at-point-of-use, "clean" power sources.

It's a tall order but, luckily, some good men have accepted the challenge. A few have even successfully demonstrated alternative sources of energy that both satisfy all the stringent requirements laid down in the paragraph above . . . and work. One of those men is Ram Bux Singh.

For almost 18 years, Ram Bux Singh has directed experiments at the Gobar ("gobar" is Hindi for "cow dung') Gas Research Station at Ajitmal in northern India. His primary responsibility there has been the development of low-cost and simplified digesters designed to convert plant and animal waste into composted fertilizer and methane for fuel.

In the course of his work, Singh has personally overseen the construction of at least 200 "bio-gas" digesters and has become possibly the planet's foremost authority on the construction of village and farm-sized waste processing units.