The Poverty of Power: Energy and the Economic Crisis.
by Barry Commoner.
Knopf. 314 pp. $10.00.
Arguments by environmentalists about public policy are often based on a line of reasoning which holds, first, that we are running out of natural resources, particularly fuels, and, second, that major government initiatives or basic political reforms are necessary to stave off consequent disaster. In his new book, The Poverty of Power, Barry Commoner, one of the nation’s most respected environmentalists, departs significantly from this neo-Malthusian argument. Commoner argues that we are not in danger of running out of fuels such as oil and coal; on the contrary, we have a fifty to one hundred year supply of oil and a four to six hundred year supply of coal within the United States alone; furthermore, we are on the threshold of developing solar power as a source of clean and virtually limitless energy. Nevertheless, Commoner is not optimistic about the nation’s capacity to solve its energy problems. He believes that we face a political and economic crisis of major proportions, a crisis arising from the intrinsic inability of capitalism to develop the energy resources needed for future generations.
Commoner bases his analysis of energy policy on a principle he calls “Second Law efficiency” (referring to the Second Law of Thermodynamics), a measure of how closely our actual consumption of energy for a given task corresponds to the minimum amount theoretically required. Some fuels, generally those that burn at low temperatures, are suited for “low-quality” work, like raising the temperature of water in a washing machine or heating a house. Other fuels, generally those that burn at high temperatures, are needed for performing mechanical work, like running an engine, but waste much of their available energy when used in “low-quality” work. In a world that respected Second Law efficiency, fuels would be carefully matched to the tasks to be performed and we would, according to Commoner, be able to conserve perhaps 55-60 per cent of the fuel resources now used to accomplish the same ends.
Some changes would be relatively simple to make, if perhaps inconvenient. For example, we could stop using electricity for space heating, a practice which wastes about two-thirds of the theoretically available energy used to create the heat. Other changes would be more far-reaching: Commoner would not use petrochemicals to make fertilizers because, he argues, natural methods of fertilization, such as the growing and plowing under of vetch (a plant high in nitrogen content), can achieve the same ends at one-seventh the energy expenditure. Still other changes would require major transformations in industrial organization and patterns of consumption. The plastics industry, with a few exceptions, is a bad bet for Commoner. Compared with natural materials, plastics are wasteful of energy resources; thus, in Commoner’s view, the production of most plastics should be curtailed and natural materials substituted.
It would be possible, if one took Commoner’s Second Law efficiency to its extreme, to argue that most tasks now performed by machines (and thus requiring fuels like oil or coal) should instead be performed by animals, human labor, or primitive machinery, which convert into work a higher proportion of the energy they consume than do more sophisticated processes. Commoner seems to recognize this when he argues that natural fertilization methods, including the use of a farm-fed horse instead of a tractor, could accomplish at virtually zero energy expenditure what now consumes thousands of units of energy in fuels and chemical fertilizers. Still, Commoner does not intend to do away with the industrial revolution—he concedes that using a horse rather than a tractor would be “impractical.” Yet it is hard to know where he would draw the line, or why.
The main issue, though, is not Commoner’s thoughts about what we should or should not dispense with, but whether his concept of Second Law efficiency can tell us very much about an appropriate energy policy. Unfortunately, it cannot. It elevates one value—the preservation of energy resources—to the position of sole arbiter of economic and social organization. But clearly we value other things more highly. If we had the choice of running a ship on oil combustion or by slave gang, should we feel compelled to choose the slaves because they are more energy efficient? Similarly, if we have two fuels—the first “wasteful” of its theoretically available work-performing capacity but cheap, easy to use, and highly versatile, the second highly “efficient” in converting its stored energy into work but expensive, difficult to use, and less versatile—why must we necessarily choose the second? We value fuel for what it can provide, not as an end in itself. In any case, Commoner’s paean to energy preservation would carry more weight if he did not also argue that we are on the threshold of a virtually limitless supply of clean energy. If we are indeed approaching such an age, it is hard to see why we should do more than encourage the development of these new and better sources of energy.
Energy-resources development is, in fact, the second major problem to which Commoner addresses himself. We now face, Commoner argues, a “capital crisis” in which American business will be unable to attract the capital needed to meet future demand, particularly the demand for energy. For evidence of such a “crisis,” Commoner cites statements by the New York Stock Exchange, Chase Manhattan Bank, and Business Week—a procedure akin to enlisting the testimony of labor leaders to prove that wages of union members are too low. Even so, the evidence does not offer ground for panic. The Stock Exchange, according to a study from which Commoner quotes, estimates that U.S. business will raise $4050 billion of the $4700 billion that it wants for capital improvements in the decade 1975-85—figures which would not spell crisis to most economists. Perhaps a clue to Commoner’s alarm over these figures may be found in the vocabulary he uses. He talks of business’s “need” for capital as if the market system would expire if it did not receive its full $4700 billion. But businessmen often want or “need” much more than they can get. Business must compete for scarce resources—this is part of the normal process of the economic system, not a sign of crisis.
Resources development is not the only area discussed by Commoner in which he reveals an ignorance of economics. Thus he sees the increasing labor productivity of capital-intensive industries (such as petrochemicals) as a sign of capitalism’s tendency to deprive workers of their jobs rather than as a condition that makes possible higher wages and cheaper goods. He argues that the crisis of the American economy is one of capital formation, yet he rejects the idea of allowing price increases and higher profits, which would create more capital. To the argument that increased capital investments may require decreased consumption, he counters rhetorically:
But suppose that the appeal were heard, and people consumed less. Who then would purchase industry’s output, and generate sufficient sales to yield a profit large enough to feed the production system’s growing demand for capital?
Commoner’s rhetorical questions have a perfectly straightforward answer: decreased demand for consumer products would be made up by increased demand from capital investments, while the overall level of economic activity would remain the same. Commoner does not seem to understand that changes in investment and consumption, in profits and demand for capital, in prices and supply, are all normal, indeed inevitable, and that they are necessary components of an equilibrium of economic forces that allow a market system to function.
Although Commoner makes explicit his belief that capitalism cannot deal with energy development, he does not show how a socialist reorganization of the American economy (which he advocates) would do any better. Certainly the record of the socialist countries does not suggest a reluctance to use petrochemical fertilizers or plastics when these are available. Nor does their record on what Commoner calls the “crisis of environmental degradation” hold out any special hope. The limited evidence on the subject (such as Marshall I. Goldman’s important work on pollution in the Soviet Union) suggests that pollution problems are no easier to solve under socialist regimes than under capitalist ones. Indeed, in some respects it is simpler to regulate private business than government agencies. The National Commission on Water Quality, for example, has found that in the years since the enactment of strict federal water-pollution controls, industrial polluters have been quicker than government polluters (like cities) to respond to pollution-control directives.
Commoner’s confidence in a government-run economy is all the more curious since he is so obviously skeptical of the competence and good intentions of our own government. He spends several pages describing how he was denied access to documents favorable to the cause of solar energy; he recounts with obvious dismay the bureaucratic maneuvering that has kept the research budget for solar energy excessively low. It may be, as Commoner suggests, that the military and atomic-energy bureaucracies are behind this distortion of government policy. But the problem of bureaucratic politics is an inevitable one in government—and the Soviets and Chinese are afflicted by it no less than are the Americans.
There are a great many arguments for or against government control of the American economy but Commoner has not seriously considered them. Nor, unfortunately, has he helped clarify the more limited, if extremely important question of the shape of a rational energy policy under our existing economic institutions. In dispelling some of the exaggerated notions of fuel scarcity which cloud public de date, Commoner has performed a service. But in trying to write a tract about the underlying problems of capitalism, he has only added to the muddle of misconceptions about the economics and politics of energy.
