potential nation of home producers of energy akin to the yeoman farmers of Jefferson's day. That some people view the potential for such autonomy as a positive value is unarguable, but one might question the extent to which such autonomy is regarded as an important value by the average consumer. Some people may enjoy tinkering with their automobiles, but most housewives long ago abandoned home canning. Whether the possibility — to say nothing of the possible necessity — of being a “do it yourselfer” with regard to one's own energy supplies would be considered by most people to be a net gain is at least questionable. Many today regard not having to tinker with appliances as an aspect of personal freedom, freeing them to do more interesting and profitable things with their time. To the extent that people did not choose to assume such roles — or were not able to for lack of skill, time, or physical health — decentralized energy production would put the consumer at the mercy of a new legion of professional repairmen whose power might be more felt and resented than that of the anonymous, largely unnoticed people who currently routinely repair leaky gas mains and even leaking gas stoves at the utilities' expense. (At least initially; in the long run of course we all pay for the cost of repairs as part of our bills.) One consequence of increased burdens placed on the individual consumer by decentralized energy sources is that, given the basic social mores of the American people, most of the burden might be gradually shifted to women, who have been able to leave the home in order to accept paid employment in large measure because of labor saving devices made available by centralized energy sources. In any event, whatever the effect on the division of household tasks between the sexes, there would be a greater total of work to go around. A movement from centralized to decentralized energy sources raises questions of equality and economic equity as well. The statement is often made by proponents of the hard energy path that since the poor are the last beneficiaries of any increased wealth in society the more energy that is produced and the more cheaply it is produced the better off they will be. This argument might be faulted both on the grounds that in the long run hard energy sources may be less productive and more expensive than soft ones — this is a technical/economic question — or that in any event the benefits of soft energy in political and/or environmental terms might be so great as to justify politically mandated forms of economic redistribution in society which would make the smaller total amounts of energy produced equally accessible to rich and poor. The whole argument is, of course, only a slight variant of the argument over the general consequences of “limits to growth” which has gone on for the last decade (31-35). But without a major and apparently unlikely restructuring of the patterns of distribution of wealth in the United States and elsewhere, a movement toward more decentralized energy production could, at least in the short run, disadvantage the poor and increase existing inequalities. In an energy economy based primarily on decentralized and varied sources, the quality and reliability of energy sources could easily differ from consumer to consumer depending on economic position. Today the rich ride in better automobiles (a decentralized form of transportation par excellence it might be noted) than do the poor and perhaps have fewer repair problems, but on the “centralized” subway or other mass transit facility all are equal — even if equal in misery in some cities. Today there is some rough equality in the reliability and efficiency of electricity purchased from utilities — even if the poor have greater difficulty in paying rising bills. But how much equality would there be in an energy regime wherein each home might have its own source? At present there is a tendency for the poorer in the population to defer seeking medical attention as long as they can hold off, save for the existence of medical insurance
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