Abstract
In order to survive
Albert Huebner's excellent book review “Time to Panic” (July/August 2004 Bulletin) ends in a pessimistic tone: “Unless the energy and environmental crises can be quickly resolved, ‘civilization as we know it will not survive.’” A cause for optimism, however, is found in the phrase “civilization as we know it.”
A glaring characteristic of the dialogue on energy issues is that solutions are sought to fuel the civilization we know today, which relies on a technologically obsolete infrastructure. Power is inefficiently transmitted from inherently difficult-to-control central nuclear and fossil-fuel generators, to energy dependent (and inefficient) homes and human activity centers. Energy Department research programs are designed to meet the needs of this existing structure, and current law enables the transfer of patent rights on the products of federal research and development to corporations with economic disincentives to use the new technologies.
A glimmer of hope can be found in the enlarging market for independent, decentralized solar and wind energy production that serves homes and buildings. Energy-efficient construction and appliances are coming into use as quickly as energy prices rise. Supplemental wind farms are rapidly being built, not only in Nantucket Sound and off the Delmarva Peninsula, but in Texas and New Mexico as well.
Given the continuing rise in the price of gasoline and diesel fuels, hybrid and fuel-cell engines could begin to replace the engines in most cars and trucks within the decade. The technology for small hybrid and solar power units, which could either generate electricity directly or power hydrolysis, could enter the market today with relatively low risk if the subsidies given to electric utilities were withdrawn and homeowners and small businesses were given access to the new market.
This revolution is already quietly advancing in Europe and Japan. But it will happen everywhere faster and more efficiently, with less social and environmental disruption and economic dislocation, if reinforced by government policies and structures that level and regulate the currently skewed marketplace for energy.
Solomons Island, Maryland
The dual book review by Albert Huebner in the July/August issue is part of why I subscribe to the Bulletin. Huebner is right, civilization as we know it might not survive. In linear progression from the present, look for increasing oil prices and oil shortages, to be followed by war and depression. Maybe it's time to get to work on the future.
Buffalo, New York
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Update
In the last issue we reported that the Mojave, California-based company Scaled Composites, after successfully flying SpaceShipOne to an altitude of 211,400 feet–the edge of space–is expected to win the Ansari X Prize sometime in 2004 or 2005 (see “Up and Away,” July/August Bulletin). To win the $10 million prize, the winning team must fly a three-person spacecraft to an altitude of 328,000 feet twice in a two-week period.
On June 21, SpaceShipOne made it to space. Under the command of test pilot Mike Melvill, the one-of-a-kind craft reached a record-breaking altitude of 328,491 feet, making Melvill the first civilian to fly a spaceship out of the atmosphere and the first private pilot to earn astronaut wings.
The historic flight also marks the first time an aerospace program has successfully completed a manned mission without government sponsorship. “Today's flight marks a critical turning point in the history of aerospace,” said Scaled Composites founder Burt Rutan. “We have redefined space travel as we know it.”
Scaled Composites has scheduled its first competition flight for September 29.
Joyoftech.com released this cartoon on the day of Melvill's historic flight.
The Bulletin's last competition, the Plutonium Memorial Design Contest, was a smashing success, with 150 entries from across the globe (from Peru to Poland, India to Italy, and New Zealand to the Netherlands). Entrants were as varied, in age and in occupation, as their home countries. We loved it so much, we're doing it again, with the More Than Minutes contest.
This new contest, with more than $5,000 in prizes to be awarded, asks entrants to design a display memorializing one of the years the Doomsday Clock changed (including the year it first appeared, 1947). Winning designs will be displayed in a “virtual museum” on the Bulletin's Web site. (Part of a sample entry is shown above.)
The clock's hand moves in accordance with world events. For example, in 1981 it moved forward to four minutes to midnight because of continuing U.S. and Soviet pursuit of nuclear firepower–and, of course, Reaganite saber rattling. But 1981 was also the year The Police earned a gold record for their LP Zenyatta Mondatta; Greece entered the European Community; Nolan Ryan threw his fifth no-hitter; and the first “test-tube baby” was born. Adding cultural and historical nuggets help capture a year's zeitgeist, which is part of the challenge of More Than Minutes. Entries should show (not just tell!) the mood and vibe surrounding the clock changes.
For more details, see page 36, or visit our Web site at www.thebulletin.org/contest.
On July 24, Pakistan released three men–a nuclear scientist and two ex-army officials–whom it had held in solitary confinement for more than six months on suspicion of involvement in a nuclear black market (Los Angeles Times, July 25, 2004).
“Only one of at least 26 Pakistanis detained in the investigation of the nuclear proliferation remains in detention,” the Times reported. That man is Mohammad Farooq, former director general of the A. Q. Khan Research Labs in Pakistan, named for Abdul Qadeer Khan, who earlier this year admitted to running an illegal nuclear proliferation scheme. In “A Bomb for the Ummah,” David Albright and Holly Higgins reported on two Pakistani scientists who considered it their duty to give nuclear bomb technology to the worldwide Muslim community (March/April 2003 Bulletin).