Carter's Energy Plan: Conserving the American Way

President Carter’s energy policy, his first major domestic policy initiative, has received a rocky reception in the Congress. In turn, Carter has been able to picture himself as the crusader for the public good, striving against the oil and automobile lobbies who, in collusion with members of Congress, are undermining his call for conservation and a farsighted national energy policy. But in all this public posturing, the specifics of Carter’s original proposals, and the questions which should be raised by those committed to biblical notions of justice and stewardship, are too easily forgotten.

The first reality to recognize is the link between the demand for energy and lifestyle. One is faced with the choice of either accepting that basic changes in the American lifestyle are impossible, and that only minor adjustments here and there can be hoped for, or that the only just solution to the world’s energy crisis will necessitate major changes in the ways of living that are customary for the globe’s more affluent citizens.

President Carter has opted for the first choice. To his credit, he has identified the existence of the energy crisis. But the strategy behind his solution is to conserve not energy so much as the American way of material life.

Scientists continually tell us that the earth’s resources are finite, and that they cannot continue to be exploited at the present rates. Some warn gravely that humanity itself is at a turning point, requiring radical changes in the standards of living and the consumption of resources if all of the globe’s inhabitants are to have a livable future. Theologians respond by calling Christians to a more responsible sense of stewardship, changing their lifestyles and patterns of consumption. Moreover, pointed biblical injunctions reveal how the basic addiction to wealth and materialistic goals is destructive not just of others but also of one’s own heart.

A preliminary response of Christians to these realities is that continued economic growth as our society has known it, with the expanding consumption of resources, is simply against the best interests of humanity. A fundamentally different vision of our economy’s role in a new and more equitable international economic order must be embraced, if only in the name of responsible stewardship, to say nothing of the demand for biblical justice and the biblical vision of shalom for all.

But at this fundamental point Carter’s energy policy moves in a decisively different direction. Its aim is to protect U.S. economic growth and to defend the potential for our basic American life style in the face of shifting energy resources. Pointedly, the goal of his energy program—despite all the earnest words about conservation—is not to reduce the amount of energy consumed by Americans by one iota. Actually, the administration’s policy projects that U.S. use of energy will increase, and proposes only that the rate of this increase be somewhat lowered (from 4.6% each year to under 2% each year).

Once one accepts the goal of continued growth and expanded energy demand—at whatever rate—one is faced with a variety of complex and confusing choices, none of which are without risk or harm. If oil is to be consumed less, something must be consumed more. Basic to Carter’s solution is a dramatic increase in coal production and increased reliance on nuclear energy.

The coal industry launched an advertising campaign last spring to convince Americans that coal was our “ace in the hole” when it came to our energy crisis. More likely, it will end up being the joker. With the increased demand to mine coal cheaply will come the growing pressure to expand strip mining, particularly in the western U.S. Present strip mining legislation has loopholes large enough for a steam shovel to go through. The prospects for greater environmental protection of lands and water recede rapidly when one understands that this national energy plan aims to increase coal production from a present 600 million tons per year to 1.2 billion tons per year by 1990.

In addition are unanswered questions regarding the air we breathe. Part of Carter’s plan envisions much of industry shifting from using oil and gas as their energy source to coal. But it is doubtful this will be possible without relaxing existing air pollution standards.

During his campaign, Jimmy Carter stated his caution regarding the development of nuclear power as an energy resource. It would be used, he promised, only as a last resort. But Carter’s plan calls for the building of 70 to 90 new conventional nuclear power plants, though only a few have been built in recent years.

This proposal propels the United States into an inextricable reliance on nuclear power for our future energy needs. The president’s most recent decision to approve the controversial Seabrook nuclear plant, where 1,414 demonstrators were arrested in the spring, underscores the seriousness of Carter’s commitment to nuclear energy. In fact, despite presidential rhetoric about saving fuel, careful studies have plainly demonstrated that the Carter energy plan depends more upon increasing nuclear power than upon any attempt to make energy conservation a serious priority.

In the long run, we must learn to rely on energy sources that are “renewable,” meaning that they don’t run out. There are only two eventual possibilities, each with dramatic and vastly different consequences for the shape of life in the United States: nuclear energy with “breeder reactors,” and solar energy. The Carter plan’s consequences would commit the nation to the first of these options when the non-renewable resources such as coal and oil are depleted.

There are basically two types of nuclear reactors: conventional ones, which are those operating today, and breeder reactors. The breeder reactor, using a different type of uranium and a complex nuclear technology, is able to reproduce its own fuel. Thus, it makes possible nuclear energy without continually mining and using the world’s limited uranium supply.

But in addition to the serious safety risk which accompanies any nuclear plant, the breeder reactor produces plutonium, and plutonium is the material necessary for making atomic weapons. Once you have plutonium, making an atomic bomb is no longer a highly sophisticated task, as was demonstrated by the recent Princeton university student who accurately designed one on his own as part of his course work.

President Carter has attempted to adopt a middle course, embracing conventional nuclear power, but ruling out breeder reactors and a “plutonium economy.” His intent on the latter point is to be commended. But building 70 to 90 conventional nuclear power plants now creates a dependence on nuclear energy, leading the nation inevitably into the even more dangerous breeder reactors when choices about non-renewable energy sources have to be made. Once we have invested so heavily in nuclear energy, the push toward breeder reactors will become irresistible as uranium becomes more scarce. The fact that Carter’s plan states only that U.S. policy is to “defer” any commitment to plutonium-based breeder reactors is all the more unsettling.

Even without the risks of nuclear proliferation which accompany plutonium, increased conventional nuclear power is fraught with ever present dangers. Recently an ABC television documentary pointed out that the probability of a “meltdown” at a conventional nuclear plant, in which thousands could be killed and tens of thousands stricken with radiation and its effects, was rated as about the same as that of two 747’s colliding on the runway at the Canary Islands earlier this year. Further there is still no failsafe solution for the storage of used nuclear fuels.

Reliance on nuclear energy means depending on a centralized energy source. Installations would eventually come under military control and protection, in all likelihood, because of the dangers of theft or sabotage. Governmental, industrial, and military power would have an interlocking grip on this major energy supply, producing, pricing, protecting, and delivering it. The checks on the power of such a nuclear energy complex would be remote at best.

One can rationally theorize that in such a future—one toward which we are heading within the next 25 years— those who controlled the nuclear energy complex could wield major control over the entire economy. The nuclear option, embraced as a technological answer to the energy crisis, pushes us toward more authoritarian, centralized, and unaccountable political and economic power dominating central aspects of our lives.

Solar energy, as the noted ecologist Barry Commoner has pointed out, is by its nature decentralized. It is possible everywhere, and those who use it, by and large, could directly control it. None of the centralized forms of power and control are necessary for its safe utilization nationally. Decentralized democracy could be fostered by its use.

Of course, solar energy supplies only a tiny fraction of our energy needs at present. But if we calculate the full social and political consequences of an eventual choice—by the turn of the century—between nuclear and solar energy, our perspective on the Carter energy plan, which in effect begins making that choice now, can hardly be positive.

The Carter plan is also revealing in its omission of any basic changes in the oil industry. Careful studies have documented beyond any doubt the enormous influences these forces have in the American economy. Proposals for taking the drilling, refining, and marketing functions of oil companies out from under the same corporate roof have been advocated, as well as preventing oil industries from expanding their base by producing other sources of energy, such as nuclear.

No such ideas, however, emerged in the President’s energy plan. The oil industry has little to fear or lose from Carter’s plans, and possibly much to gain. The president has proposed no basic threat to their power.

The auto industry was concerned about the proposals for taxes on gas-guzzlers and rebates on low mileage cars. But in a classic alliance of big industry and big labor, they have been able to weaken and postpone these proposals in the Congress. Further, their concern must have been eased by the fact that the Carter plan contained absolutely nothing to encourage the development of mass transit, the only possible alternative to the nation’s insatiable allurement to the automobile.

Finally, it is worth noting briefly the effect of this energy plan on the poor, particularly if we are to evaluate its effects from the standpoint of biblical justice.

The proposal includes a tax on the price of domestic crude oil and speaks of a system of tax rebates to consumer, including some to lower income people hit by higher energy prices. But the plan is especially vague and imprecise on this point. It is not clear that all the revenues from oil taxes would be returned to the public.

The oil industry has already begun looking longingly at the billions of dollars to be generated by this tax. Proposals in Congress surfaced last month for the industry to grab a chunk of these funds for financing new oil exploration. Such pressures are bound to escalate once the plan is in operation. There is no insurance that the poor will be adequately compensated for the rise in their fuel bills.

Examined through the lens of a biblical sensitivity to justice, Carter’s energy proposals are defective in several major ways. There is no notion of just world stewardship over energy resources, but rather, a determination to protect the unrestrained appetites of America’s consumptive ethic. Insisting on increasing energy demand inevitably means escalating environmental deterioration, one way or another. By binding the nation to a nuclear future, the plan exposes the nation to a cluster of grave risks—from radiation, proliferation, and political centralization. Finally, especially given Congress’ disposition to further dilute what is already watered down, the rich and the energy industries are the most likely to benefit from the plan, at the expense of the poor and other consumers.

President Carter termed the energy crisis “the gravest domestic crisis which I shall face during my own term as president,” and has called his response “the moral equivalent of war.” Given the moral character of recent American wars, discerning Christians may find that comparison quite apt.

Wes Michaelson was managing editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.