MORE PERSPECTIVE ON WORLD ENERGY RELATIONSHIPS

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The following notes are reprinted with
the permission of Dr. Howard T. Odum

Twenty points about the current world energy situation are made in the preceding article that uses simple models to show some fallacies in many proposed responses to energy needs. Additional points follow:

1. U.S. policy relative to other countries is dangerous to its survival as an independent entity.

The countries that hold back their richer fuel reserves while others are spending their last reserves end up with more relative power in military and economic affairs. The recent actions to use our reserves of fuel and other energy costing and amplifying strategic reserves for business as usual is bordering on treasonous and yet was adopted by an ignorant Congress.

Rich energies get more energies if they are used in amplifier actions (example: machinery for using other resources). As rich fuels get scarce they become more and more limiting in such activities and their energy amplifier effect gets larger. Thus, the countries that save energy until later get more energy out of secondary amplifier actions. One should not spend our reserves now.

Fuels don't actually run out except where price fixing is attempted, since holding prices down causes oils to go elsewhere for sale. Money costs rise as energy cost of getting energy rises, since a higher percentage of the human economy gets involved in energy getting. The long-range energy effect is the diversion of many current aspects of our so-called standard of living back to energy collection and concentration work.

Those that advocate use of current remaining reserves in order to be internationally independent are thinking backwards. In the first place, if one uses up one's own reserves rather than those available to economic and military competitors, one makes his last situation worse. If you go far enough at this, you will ultimately become a colony invaded either economically or militarily. To maintain independence, keep reserves in storage to help control prices and prevent attack, and use up everyone else's fuels first, even if one has to pay more and take a temporary cut in living standard. In the second place, using one's own oil reserves causes one to get to low-grade oils, spending more and more of one's economy on getting energy and lowering one's balance of payments and standard of living anyway.

2. Present U.S. policy has some war risks.

Large war may be prevented if all potential combatants have a realistic understanding of their energy condition, so that they will truly know what the outcome would be if a war was conducted at a particular boundary, considering its distance from respective power centers.

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