Books in Brief: The Economics of Energy

The Economics of Energy, What Went Wrong and How We Can Fix It, by Roger LeRoy Miller (Morrow, 131 pp., $4.95). In this surprisingly informative, lucid, and persuasive volume Miller assails the conservationists and doomsdayers of “spaceship earth” who fail to see how the price mechanism and changing technology can keep us from running out of scarce resources. He places the blame for the energy crisis chiefly on the government for instituting price controls and promoting overconsumption. But he also is highly critical of the oil industry, which lobbied for special tax breaks that cost Americans $4 to $5 billion a year in higher prices. He reveals the State Department’s efforts to get oil companies to accept the producing nations’ price increases. He derides President Nixon’s wasteful and costly goal of “self-sufficiency in 1980.” Finally, in a positive tone, Miller offers a six-point plan to fix what went wrong, including the abolition of price controls and the oil industry’s special privileges.