Page 479 - 1970S

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m your electric coffee maker, hits the
spot. Soon you are off to work.
A Morning at Home
But what about you, the wife at
home?
You begin the household "chores"
of washing clishes in your automatic
dishwasher. "What a work saver this
is," you think as you arrange the soiled
dishes and pour in the detergent.
The floors are dirty, and this calls for
help. So out comes the electric vacuum
cleaner from the closet. The clothes
hamper in the bathroom is overflowing,
and must be taken care of. Into the
automatic washer go the soiled clothes.
And no clothesline worries you - an
electric or gas dryer does the job.
Stop and consider for a moment.
You have already used sorne 16
electrical, gas- or oil-6red appliances in
the course of just one morning.
Actually, American homes have avail–
able for use over 200 separate electrical
gadgets. These exclude gas- or oil–
powered machines such as a lawn–
mower or the automobile.
One person was recently challenged
to compile a list of the electrical gadgets
in his home. To his astonishment he
found a total of 67 items - nearly one
third of those available!
The newest of these mechanical ser–
vants is the "garbage crunching" device
for compacting household solid waste
before putting it into the garbage can.
Another is the electrically heated comb
for men, to match the wife's electric
rollers.
Our "Mechanical Maids"
To power these mechanical devices,
Americans use more than 8 trillion
horsepower-hours of energy every year.
Imagine having to stable the number
of actual horses necessary to do this
much work.
Much of this 8 trillion horsepower–
hours is at the immediate beck and call
of Americans. Each American has at his
fingertips, on the average, the equiva–
lent of the energy expended by 500
human slaves.
This means, according toLos Auge/es
Times science writer Irving Bengels–
dorf, that the true population of the
U. S. is 200 million people PLUS
The PLAIN TRUTH
100 billion energy-slaves, making a total
human equivalent of 100,200,000,000
working servants.
This represents our total impact upon
the environment. But the noxious
wastes from our energy-slaves are far
more difficult to deal with than mere
human wastes.
Nevertheless, Americans especially
continue to develop new energy-con–
suming gadgets.
The amount of electricity produced
to power the gadgets - and industry
- was 1.6 trillion ki lowatt-hours in
11 Americans alone are ex–
pected to demand ;ust as
much electrical energy in
the next 1O years as they
did in the preceding 90
years/'
1970. Within a decade, authorities esti–
mate, Americans will consume TWtCE the
yearly power they presently use.
This trend of a more voracious power
consumption has forced utility com–
panies to build increasingly larger
power-generating plants. Sorne are capa–
ble of producing at thc rate of one
million kilowatt-hours or more. A plant
of this size gulps 9000 tons of coal each
day. As a result, an estimated 300 mil–
Jion tons of coal were fed into Ameri–
can steam-electric plants during 1970
alooe! Tramporting this vast amount of
coa! is an enormous task for America's
railroads.
Authorities note that indmlr)' uses
about 41% of the U. S. electrical sup–
ply; bornes and commercial users divide
up 49% between them. The remaining
10% is lost in transmission.
Reacbing the Critica! Point
How critica! is the electrical supply?
In 1965, history's largest electric
power failure plunged 80,000 square
miles of America's Eastern Seaboard
into darkness. Experts predict more
such "blackouts" and "brownouts."
During the 1969-1970 winter, 39 of
181 large U. S. utility companies had
less than lOo/o electrical reserves for an
emergency.
February 1971
And more recently, Britain's 125,000
electrical workers went on strike, plung–
ing huge masses of her population
into darkness, curtailing industry, and
wreaking havoc with city traffic when
street lights failed.
Yet, worldwide energy demands,
both prívate and commercial, continue
to increase.
Americaos alone are expected to
demand just as much electric energy in
the next 10 years as they did in the pre–
ceding 90 years - a total of at least
18,000,000,000,000 ( 18 trillion) kilo–
watt-hours.
Said Dr. Wilson M. Laird, Director,
Office of Oil and Gas, U. S. Department
of the Interior, in a speech delivered on
March 5, 1970: "We are entering a
period of growing scarcity in energy -
of all kinds, and the ironic thing is that
we go on acting as though our s11ppi)' is
endless ... gas distributing companies
continue to run full-page ads touting
their product ... We continue to build
and aggressively merchandise every con–
ceivable kind of appliance that can be
attached to an electric power line,
including wholc-house electric heating
requiring three times the expenditure of
energy as oil or gas."
Americans are not alone in their
voracious appetite for electric power.
Other industrial oations are also con–
suming ever-greater amounts of energy.
Canadians and Norwegians, on a man–
for-man basis, consume more electricity
than do Americans.
Can Americans continue to supply and
distribute the growing energy require–
ments that double c:very 10 years or less?
What effect will this have on carth's
complex - and in many ways fragi le
- ecological interrelationships?
Sho11ld we use so much energy?
Ought we to reconsider the unrestricted,
uncontrolled devouring of nonrenew–
able "fossil fuels" as our main source of
energy?
Where Electricity Comes From
At present the vast majority of our
electricity comes from steam-generating
plants powered by coal, oil, and natural
gas.
From the start of the Machine Age,
coal has been the most significant