Energy: patterns, planning and architecture

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ECONOMIC FAILURE: Our current rate of inflation will accelerate and the dollar will almost certainly be devalued against gold . . . not once, but many times. Look for a decline in the stock market of over 200 points in less than a year. Interest rates will rise to 12%. We'll have a national annual deficit of 500 billion dollars.

COMPLETE URBAN BREAKDOWN: Enormous blighted areas stretch for miles upon miles in Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Philadelphia, New York, Newark, etc. The exodus of people and businesses from our cities to ever growing peripheral circles is expanding at a national rate of one mile of radius per year . . . leaving behind all accumulated municipal wealth: libraries, schools, theaters, courthouses, parks, etc. The remaining vacuum of 85% asphalt jungle is for those who cannot escape . . . their lives are to transpire between super expressways, parking lots, condemned buildings and old movie houses, while the escapees are astonished at the crime rate of those too poor to escape. Entire metropolitan areas have been left without a tax base to maintain city streets or provide adequate police or fire protection. This is not to mention the complete lack of urban space, sidewalk cafes, fountains, sculpture or simply a decent, pleasant, quiet place to be.

THE SOLUTION TO THESE PROBLEMS IS NOT:

THE ALASKAN PIPELINE: It will take an enormous amount of materials and energy to develop the pipeline and the North Slope oil field which it will tap . . . an oil field which, if it were the sole source of petroleum for the U.S., would last a mere three years. An oil spill anywhere along the proposed pipeline will result in a larger petroleum-caused destruction of land and animals than any to date.

MASSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF NUCLEAR POWER: The fabrication of approximately 20 nuclear power plants per state, as the Atomic Energy Commission now plans, will be a disaster. Even if such a system can be made fail-safe—which it cannot unless a miracle positively does away with sabotage, war, homemade atomic bombs and the slightest imperfection in the cooling and storage of radioactive materials-the enormous cost of the undertaking will be a tremendous burden on the taxpayers of this country. And, even if the nuclear generation of power does work as perfectly as planned, it will create an astronomical amount of absolutely deadly radioactive waste that—as Dave Brower, head of Friends of the Earth says—will be around five times as long into the future as recorded history goes into the past. This is a terribly dangerous legacy to leave to our children and our children's children and the generations which—we hope—will follow.

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