Copyright 2001 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company  
Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA)
March 22, 2001 Thursday
SECTION: METRO; James Lileks; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 441 words

HEADLINE: Go nuclear or go back to the awful '70s

BYLINE: James Lileks

BODY:
Those of us who grew up in the 1970s have an instinctive reaction to talk of energy crisis: shuddering fear and revulsion. Fear of presidents making earnest speeches while they shiver in a thin sweater. Fear of a national campaign to turn thermometers down to meat-locker levels. Fear of lines at the gas station to fill up a pathetic tinny car that looked like someone had pasted wood-grained plastic on a packing crate. Fear of dystopian sci-fi movies featuring a bleak, rusty future where people kill for a gallon of unleaded, and dirty-faced children scuttle around in the wreckage of civilization hooting like apes. The narrower our national vistas seemed, the wider our lapels became. It was a horrible, horrible time.

And it's back! Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham says we're in a crunch again, and "failure to meet this challenge will threaten our nation's economic prosperity, will compromise our national security and literally alter the way we live our lives."

You'll hear the usual suspects clamor for the usual solutions. Aside from shutting down the economy and returning to tribal agrarian society, they're simple:
   -- Wind power. Yes, it's free. Aside from the cost of erecting vast farms of whirling blades and hooking them to the grid, it's free. Aside from the cost of buying the entire state of North Dakota to build the windmills, it's free. Aside from the cost of the lawsuits filed by Friends of the Geese and PETA, who will be appalled when migrating flocks are turned into a shower of finely diced flesh by the rotating blades, it's free.

It's just not enough. And it's not dependable. If it were capable of generating enough power to be economically useful, power companies would do it.
 
||sixth-largest in the world -- has a fighting chance to survive into the middle of the century. And let's build nuclear plants. Lots of them. Enough to shut down every dirty power plant in the nation. It's odd how we're always lectured about the wisdom of Europe -- they have socialized medicine, nice subsidized trains and high gas taxes. Yet Europhiles never mention two salient characteristics of the Old World: They smoke enough cigarettes to equal American coal pollution, and France alone has more nuclear plants than varieties of cheese.

It's either this or head right back to the '70s. This week it's a million people without power in California; next week it's a Foghat reunion tour, and a fashion show in which men wear smoked aviator glasses and scarves. You've been warned.

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James Lileks writes for Newhouse News Service. He can be contacted at james.lileks@newhouse.com.

LOAD-DATE: April 27, 2001