as there can assumedly be a mixed energy future — combining both hard and soft energy technologies — so there can and necessarily will be mixed value futures, combining both increases and decreases in freedom, increases and decreases in equality. The really difficult question is the second one — How can we tailor a mix of energy technologies which will yield the desired combination of value outcomes? To this question no clear-cut answer exists at present for two reasons. One is that while value considerations will and should play a role in choices among technologies, economic and technological considerations (which in turn ultimately rest on the implicit value of survival of our existing political and social system) will probably necessarily remain paramount. We may have to accept certain losses in the areas of freedom and/or equality and seek to compensate for them by other social and political means, after the fact of technological choice. The second reason is that despite claims and wishes to the contrary technology assessment is still and necessarily always will be a difficult enterprise (37-41). Not only is it difficult as a matter of empirical science to predict the consequences of choice, it is difficult to philosophically evaluate them even after the fact. Suppose we had it to do all over again, would we build a society largely based on the automobile? Has the automobile been a worthwhile technological innovation in terms of our values looked at in toto or has it not? If we find it difficult to evaluate the already known social and physical consequences of a technology, how do we measure the value implications of technologies whose future consequences necessarily remain problematic? What remains to be done, then? Shall we abandon the attempt to rationally discuss the value consequences of technological options? Hardly, but perhaps we should lean toward modesty in our claims for the differing paths based on purported value consequences. Perhaps all we can do at this point is to keep in mind that in discussing the relationship between technological choices and value options we must be aware of the potentialities for gains or losses in cherished values in deciding upon our energy future. But — while eschewing the mindless acceptance of others' decisions, often erroneously conceptualized as fate, implicit in “muddling through” strategies — we must also have some faith in the future and our capacity to adjust to and creatively alter the relationship between technologies and their social consequences in the decades to come. Not only do all technological choices imply economic and physical risks which cannot be completely eliminated, they also involve social and political risks, dangers to our cherished values, as well. But there can be no such thing as a riskless future. REFERENCES 1. National Academy of Sciences, Energy in Transition 1985-2010. Final Report of the Committee on Nuclear and Alternative Energy Systems, National Research Council, pp. 484-485, 640, W.H. Freeman, San Francisco, 1980. 2. A.B. Lovins and J.H. Price, Non-Nuclear Futures. The Case for an Ethical Energy Strategy, Friends of the Earth, San Francisco, 1975. 3. A.B. Lovins, World Energy Strategies Facts, Issues, and Options, Friends of the Earth, San Francisco, 1975. 4. A.B. Lovins, Soft Energy Paths: Toward a Durable Peace, Friends of the Earth, San Francisco, 1977. 5. A.B. Lovins, A Neo-Capitalist Manifesto: Free Enterprise Can Finance Our Energy Future, Politiks and Other Human Interests, pp. 15-18, April 11, 1978. 6. A.B. Lovins, Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken, Foreign Affairs, 55, 65-96, 1976. 7. A. Mazur and E. Ross, Energy and Lifestyle, Science, 186, 608-610, 1974.
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