In one very important sense, the energy crisis so much in the news is a fraud. The same can be said of many aspects of the various forms of environmental crisis. These problems are not in themselves insoluble; all too often, people just will not let them get solved. In fact, the only great crisis we are facing is that which I call the technology crisis. And that crisis can be identified as the unwillingness of many to let our technology solve the problems forming the other so-called crises.
A few background remarks are in order. First and most important, many judgments about technology and its supposed limitations are based on questionable assumptions. This has long been the case, of course. It was once “proven” that commercial heavier than air transport was impossible, because aircraft power plants would always remain as inefficient as the early ones. That a rocket could never reach the moon, since it must use as weak an explosive as nitroglycerine, and its upward acceleration could hardly exceed 32 feet per second. That electrical power generation to numerous private homes could not be achieved, because half the total electrical losses, in the form of heat, would occur at the generator. That one could never determine what the stars were made of, because the identification of chemicals required contact. And, most famous of all, that it was aerodynamically impossible for the bumblebee to fly, a thesis which depended upon treating him as a fixed-wing aircraft rather than as one with moving wings.
Comments