Learning the Three Es

By Philip Herrera

THE POVERTY OF POWER by BARRY COMMONER 314 pages. Knopf. $10.

This book attempts the impossible --but then again, that is the author's trademark. It was Microbiologist Commoner who most convincingly alerted Americans to the environmental crisis (TIME cover, Feb. 2, 1970). It was also Commoner who first suggested--in his 1971 bestseller The Closing Circle--that U.S. industry be restructured to conform to ecology's unbending laws. Specifically, he recommended that polluting products (detergents, for example, or synthetic textiles) be replaced by good old natural ones (soap, or cotton and wool). Just how to accomplish such a major switch in industrial direction Commoner did not say and of course not much of what he hoped for came about. Now he is trying to close the circle in a different way. The Poverty of Power is a closely reasoned, adult primer on energy, examined in relation to several laws of science and economics. First are the laws of thermodynamics, which he uses to prove that fully 85% of the work potential in the nation's oil, coal and uranium is wasted. Commoner shows how the environment is harmed by the industries that use the most energy--petrochemicals, transportation, agriculture. Finally, the economy is affected too. Because the nation's fuels are irreplaceable resources, the energy industries have naturally used the most accessible reserves first. Now, says Commoner, the law of diminishing returns must take effect: the costs of getting the same fuels necessarily have to mount. The rising cost of energy, in turn, helps to cause the inflation that has been ravaging Western economies.

Ironically, Commoner continues, if the nation really wanted to solve energy problems, it could. One way would be to match energy-demanding tasks to resources. Using fast electrified trains for journeys up to 500 miles should be encouraged, for example, because they use energy efficiently. But burning coal or oil in a power plant to heat homes electrically should be discouraged because 97% of the energy is wasted. Indeed, all heating and cooling of U.S. buildings should be done with solar energy, which is virtually limitless and thus, at least in the long run, cheap.

So far, so good--even if Commoner does not spell out how the nation should go about financing such changes. But then he moves to a more demanding and shakier argument. All U.S. industry, he says, is caught in a trap. It keeps looking to new technologies to boost output and has to pay immense amounts of money for new machines. Since the money cannot come from internal profits -- which Commoner, at least, claims have dropped sharply -- it has to come from banks and other investors who are already pinched for capital. Moreover, the new processes tend to use less human labor, spurring unemployment. "Energy links the two effects," says Commoner, concluding that energy problems are a major cause of shortages of both capital and jobs.

This bald summary scants Commoner's enviable skill at explaining complicated technical issues in lucid and lively terms. The reader rides as easily on Commoner's prose as on one of his favorite electric trains. Then, suddenly, the author's destination looms up. He blames America's energy, environmental and economic troubles squarely on the baneful evolution of the once effective capitalistic system because it aims to emphasize "private profit rather than social value." The solution, "at least in principle," Commoner insists, is some form of socialism.

This solution appears only in the last seven pages of the book. It is presented, not argued. Commoner obviously feels that his economic conclusion inevitably flows from his previous demonstrations that present ways of using energy do not work and cannot be changed enough within the system.

Well, it is not quite so simple as that. No matter where socialism has been tried, it has not yet solved the interlocking problems of the three Es -- energy, environment and economy. Capitalism surely is capable of taking more benign forms. Beyond that, many of Commoner's "facts" are dubious. Capital does not seem to be unavailable and corporate profits, while they have not kept up with inflation, show little sign of drying up either. In other words, the author's logic is far less airtight than it seems. Commoner is a much better gadfly than economist. Philip Herrera

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