The Technics of Decentralization

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What sort of changes can we anticipate in our economic machinery as the flow of the plutonic fuels—coal and oil—into the fireboxes and cylinders of its prime movers inevitably shrinks?

There are various standard engineering answers to this question. Oil will be extracted from shale and produced by hydrogenation of low-quality coals. An increasing proportion of coal will be used in central power plants adapted to burning such coals efficiently. All available hydroelectric power will be harnessed. Then, as the scarcity mounts, alcohol from crops will become the major automotive fuel; wind power will be utilized; the tides, the sun's heat, the temperature differential of surface and bottom sea water, etc. The solutions 'become progressively more visionary as distance in time from the present increases, yet engineers on the whole seem to feel that the problems will be met adequately as they arise.

However, there is no denying that in a few more decades we will enter a period when the lavish supply of rich, easily secured natural fuels will no longer be available. Synthesized oil or alcohol will be more costly than oil from gushers; coal will be harder to come by; all the failing waters in the country harnessed will meet only a fraction of our present energy budget; wind power is variable and not adaptable to industrial uses as they are understood today.

It is reasonable to suppose that as this energy scarcity makes itself felt in our economy, the power consumption of this economy will be studied more and more rigorously. Every type of fuel-consuming engine will be analyzed, not merely to determine whether its thermodynamic efficiency is the maximum possible, but to determine whether It is doing work which needs to be done at all , which might, in fact, be unnecessary under a more logical arrangement of the economic mechanism.

Such an enforced examination will make more obvious the advantages of a decentralized society.

HOW IS THE POWER USED?

In a recent advertisement the Association of American Railroads proudly revealed that the average potato in this country travels seven hundred forty-one and one-half miles from the field where it is grown to the corner grocer's where it is sold. For the maintenance of our transportation system at its present level of capitalization this is no doubt an excellent thing, but it is a very bad thing from the point of view of efficient use of our coal and other mineral reserves.

It is demonstrable that in a decentralized economy potatoes can generally be grown within a few miles or even a few rods of their ultimate point of consumption with highly satisfactory all-around results; and the same principle applies to countless other goods now produced in specialized production centers and hauled, by the prodigal use of fuel-generated horsepower, to far-off specialized consumption centers. Quite aside from humanitarian and political considerations, when reduced fuel reserves make it impossible for us to squander heat energy in this fashion (and nine-tenths of it is even wasted mechanically, going up locomotive stacks in the form of unused heat) a reorganization of our society on this basis of decentralization will become physically essential.

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