informed decision regarding further development of the concept. More than a year before the DOE study was completed, the U.S. House of Representatives had passed by a vote of 201 to 146 a bill to authorize an additional $25 million to accelerate exploratory R&D on the SPS concept. The year before that, a similar measure was approved by 267 to 94 (3). Today, that same proposal lies buried in the Senate. Even the allocation of $6 million, an amount that was included in the first Carter budget for FY 1981 and that would barely have kept the project alive for another year, was removed from the next budget submission. Since then, two recent government reports, prepared by the Office of Technology Assessment (4) and by the National Research Council (5), also sought to assess the energy potential of the SPS concept. Both expressed strong reservations regarding the commitment of further funds for a specific SPS research program, citing technological difficulties, economic uncertainties and a general lack of urgency. It is becoming clear that the SPS concept will not soon be given the kind of serious consideration and support its proponents believe it deserves. That societal response is due primarily to the way in which energy policy has evolved over the past few years in interaction with significant changes in public perceptions. Several years ago, Sociologist O. Dudley Duncan (6) pointed to a general pattern of conceptual evolution suggested by the history of the nuclear energy controversy, in which problems that are originally defined as scientific and technical later come to be viewed as economic, and still later as intrinsically social and political. The process has accelerated in recent years, with the growing distrust of complicated technologies. As Robert Ayres (7) reminds us: There are many examples of “possible” technologies that, for a variety of reasons, are unlikely to be developed in the near future even though scientists and engineers are set to proceed with all deliberate speed. But economists, businessmen, politicians, and citizens may see things differently. A convergence of perceptions now frustrates the hopes of many who were expecting an uninterrupted continuation of research-and-development support for the SPS concept as an energy option. This paper seeks a preliminary understanding of recent societal trends that appear to be incompatible with the type of technology, the scale of deployment, and the size and uncertainty of the costs that are associated with this new energy supply option. THE ENERGY DILEMMA AS A SOCIAL ISSUE The Arab oil embargo of October 17, 1973 marked the end of the era of cheap and dependable oil and gas, and the difficult beginnings of transition toward a much more diversified and expensive system of energy supply. Americans discovered in the ensuing years that all the alternative fuel supplies entail painful trade-offs among competing commitments and incompatible goals. All of them involve potentially greater environmental damage and human risk, higher production costs and less versatility than the oil and gas they are intended to replace. None can be developed without arousing anxiety and opposition. Energy strategy has become a social and political issue, even more than an economic and technological one. It entails a continuing struggle over questions of social structure and power, of who pays and who benefits with regard to social and eco-
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