Dr. E. F. Schumacher: Author of the Book Small is Beautiful

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Our use of these fuels will simply have to level off. If not sooner, later. And if not because we've exhausted them, then because we are trying to burn them so fast that we're changing the thermal balance of the planet.

PLOWBOY: What about nuclear energy?

SCHUMACHER: Criminal. Criminal. We are prepared to go to the last degree of violence to satisfy our greed.

The terrible thing about nuclear fission is that its radioactive elements are deadly and, once created, there is absolutely nothing we can do to "uncreate" them. Only time can reduce radioactivity to a safe level. In the case of plutonium, which is produced in very large quantities by the new breeder reactors, the time involved is 500,000 years.

And it's not just the lethal fuel and by-products of the reactors we must worry about, but the reactors themselves. Each one works for only 20 or 30 years, you know, before it too must be sealed and treated as radioactive waste. Fission reactors, in short, are satanic devices which endanger this and the next 20,000 generations for only the slightest fleeting economic gain.

Because of these appalling dangers, there is now a good deal of talk about fusion reactors, which produce no radioactive wastes. The difficulty is that fusion will take place continuously only at the temperature of the sun . . . a fact which is sure to have its own adverse effect on the earth's environment. Luckily for us, the practical feasibility of a fusion reactor has in no way yet been established.

PLOWBOY: But nuclear energy—especially fusion—has such an irresistible appeal for the "growth at any price" people. It totally fascinates them . . . hypnotizes them the way a flame mesmerizes a troth. It looks like such a neat way to put unlimited energy into our hands so we can go right on expanding our economy for the next 100 years the way we have for the past 30.

SCHUMACHER: Well, just as the moth perishes in the candle flame, we shall perish if we succeed in developing such a source of energy. Thirty years of unlimited growth have left us in such bad psychological shape that our society could never stand another 100. And it has damaged the living environment so badly that the earth could never stand it either.

But there is another point I would like to make. Our materialistic society will not substitute nuclear energy for the fossil fuels we have been using. Instead, it will use the new to whip up its appetite for more of the old. The more nuclear energy there is, the more oil we shall need to satisfy our ever-increasing thirst for petroleum. You cannot cure the disease by intensifying its cause. What the advocates of nuclear energy hold tip as our salvation is only the road into absolute perdition. It is only the road into hell.

PLOWBOY: And how are we going to get off that road`?

SCHUMACHER: We must strive for a wisdom that will no longer allow us to do the foolish things we have been doing. We have developed a very clever technology but, like the sorcerer's apprentice, we do not have the wisdom to use it properly.

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