SPACE SOLAR POWER REVIEW Volume 4, Number 4, 1983 PERGAMON PRESS New York / Oxford / Toronto/ Paris/ Frankfurt /Sydney
SPACE SOLAR POWER REVIEW Published under the auspices of the SUNSAT Energy Council Editor-in-Chief Dr. John W. Freeman Space Solar Power Research Program Rice University, P.O. Box 1892 Houston, TX 77251, USA Associate Editors Dr. Eleanor A. Blakely Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Colonel Gerald P. Carr Bovay Engineers, Inc. Dr. M. Claverie Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Dr. David Criswell California Space Institute Mr. Leonard David PRC Energy Analysis Company Mr. Hubert P. Davis Eagle Engineering Professor Alex J. Dessler Rice University Mr. Gerald W. Driggers L-5 Society Mr. Arthur M. Dula Attorney; Houston, Texas Professor Arthur A. Few Rice University Mr. I.V. Franklin British Aerospace, Dynamics Group Dr. Owen K. Garriott National Aeronautics and Space Administration Professor Norman E. Gary University of California, Davis Dr. Peter E. Glaser Arthur D. Little Inc. Professor Chad Gordon Rice University Dean William E. Gordon Rice University Dr. Arthur Kantrowitz Dartmouth College Mr. Richard L. Kline Grumman Aerospace Corporation Dr. Harold Liemohn Boeing Aerospace Company Dr. James W. Moyer Southern California Edison Company Professor Gerard K. O'Neill Princeton University Dr. Eckehard F. Schmidt AEG—Telefunken Dr. Klaus Schroeder Rockwell International Professor George L. Siscoe University of California, Los Angeles Professor Harlan J. Smith University of Texas Mr. Gordon R. Woodcock Boeing Aerospace Company Dr. John Zinn Los Alamos Scientific Laboratories Editorial Assistant: Jean S. McHenry Editorial Office: John W. Freeman, Editor-in-Chief, Space Solar Power Research Program, Rice University P O Box 1892, Houston, TX 77251, USA.
0191-9067/83 $3.00 + .00 Copyright ® 1984 SUN SAT Energy Council EDITORIAL President Reagan's commitment to a space station represents an important step toward space based energy systems for terrestrial use. The Space Station will no doubt lead to experimentation with large structure construction techniques and it should provide a vehicle for testing SPS concepts. Now is an excellent time for innovative thinking on ways in which the Space Station can be utilized to further research on SPS. Space Solar Power Review invites papers on this subject. This issue contains six papers presented at the recent AAAS Symposium on “Hard and Soft Technology — Coexistence or Divergencies.” An excellent introduction to these papers has been provided by Drs. Cheston and Glaser. We are pleased that the authors of these papers have agreed to have their papers appear in the Space Solar Power Review. John W. Freeman Editor-in-Chief
digitized by the Space Studies Intitute ssi.org
0191-9067/83 $3.00 + .00 Copyright ® 1984 SUNSAT Energy Council SOFT AND HARD TECHNOLOGY IN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT: COEXISTENCE OR DIVERGENCE? T. STEPHEN CHESTON Geostar Corporation 101 Carnegie Center Princeton, New Jersey 08540, USA and PETER E. GLASER Arthur D. Little, Inc. Acorn Park Cambridge, Massachusetts 02140, USA FORWARD The birth of this volume is a statement of sorts of the divergent forces at play in U.S. public opinion in the 1970s. The story actually begins in the latter 1960s during the halcyon efforts of the Apollo program to land a man on the moon. The mesmerizing drama of the space program caused a number of scientists and engineers to adopt a the-sky-is-the-limit attitude to their thinking. There was a vigor and robustness in their mental processes that transformed science fiction-like ideas into feasible realities, at least on paper. The first such idea was Solar Power Satellites (SPS) which was designed to produce massive amounts of electricity from sunlight by collecting solar energy in space 24 hours a day and transmitting it to the Earth's electrical power grid. The concept called for building huge solar collectors (kilometers in diameter) in orbit, this being permitted by the near zero gravity in the space environment. The collectors required advanced technology and substantial capital to construct. However, once on line they would be a passive, totally renewable and very low maintenance source of energy (1). In the early 1970s the SPS concept was absorbed into a portfolio of ideas to utilize space for economic purposes known collectively as Space Industrialization (SI). Besides SPS, SI included proposals for factories to process pharmaceuticals, electronic crystals, alloy metals and other highly specialized products that would have substantial value added by utilizing space's near zero gravity and natural hard vacuum and cryogenic temperatures. SI also involved super-sized communications satellites that would miniaturize the size and cost of ground receiving and transmission stations to put them within economic grasp of the average citizen. The crescendo of this highly creative period of space engineering ideas occurred in 1974 and
1975 with the first publications related to the space colony concept. This was a proposal to build gigantic satellites to house hundreds and even thousands of persons as permanent residents in a space industrial system that would construct solar power satellites from raw material obtained from the moon and nearby asteroids (2). This extravaganza of technological ideas coincided with the emergence of now familiar features of the political culture of the 1970s: the energy crisis, broad public involvement in policy issues, the environmental movement and the “small is beautiful” idea. Energy for the most part had lain in the recesses of American political consciousness prior to the oil embargo of 1973. Supply was relatively automatic and at reasonable cost; hence there was little felt need for active public involvement. The shock of abrupt scarcity and high prices however made energy a main course on the table of national policy overnight, and the environment for public discourse was essentially negative. Something had gone wrong; the consumer was suddenly at a disadvantage and the nation vulnerable to hatreds internal to the Middle East. The energy supply system and its institutions were instantly made the center of hostile attention. A hallmark of the system was large institutions, be they multinational oil corporations or electric power companies. Concurrently, disillusionment with the Vietnam War had spawned broad public participation in policy issues which manifested itself in activity ranging from street demonstrations to forcing intense Congressional scrutiny of Executive actions. As a result, some policy items requiring highly specialized knowledge that at one time would have been handled dispassionately by a relative handful of professionals became the focus of citizen interests groups and emotionally charged discussion. This phenomenon particularly touched public policy related to high technology. This stemmed in part from the very visible destruction caused by U.S. high technology weaponry in an unpopular war. The negative view of technology in this case spread to the other areas and generally made high technology questions candidates for citizen group activity. Intimately tied to technology issues was the birth of the environmental movement. The origins of the movement in the latter 1960s are related in part to a Thoreauvian theme that periodically re-emerges politically in American culture and manifestations of large scale pollution in certain sections of the country. The environmental movement include a wide range of opinion, from pragmatic solutions for local pollution problems to tum-the-clock-back pastoral living philosophies. It was the quintessence of broad public involvement in policy issues and was especially active with energy and technology questions. In approaching these questions sectors of the environmental movement adopted the “small is beautiful” concept which originated from the work of Ernst Schumacher (3). Its central thesis was that the rise of large scale and complex institutions to meet energy and other human needs was fundamentally unnecessary, exploitive and antidemocractic. It disrupted basic human relationships with nature and the individual's control over his or her destiny. Simplicity, small scale, conservation, and symbiosis with the forces of nature were hallmarks of the “small is beautiful” concept. In regard to energy the concept called for conservation and the use of renewable resources as opposed to the depletion of nonrenewable sources such as fossil fuels. A catalog of technological devices was suggested which utilized the daily heating of the sun and were in the hands of individuals or small communities. The devices became known as “soft technology” and the older system of large scale energy supply known as “hard technology” (4). Not surprisingly the Solar Power Satellites (SPS) became emeshed into the general debate of the latter 1970s. There was a schizophrenic quality in the discussions.
On the one hand SPS promised to provide sufficient renewable solar energy to noticeably reduce U.S. dependence on foreign energy sources and aid lesser developed countries that were energy deficient. On the other hand, it was a large scale, advanced technology project that required substantial capitalization and centralization. In addition it had a somewhat unique environmental impact that became the proverbial half-a-glass of water. The electrical energy was transmitted to Earth from the satellite via low density microwaves. Practical experience with microwaves had been limited to radar and the microwave communication network that the U.S. had established in the 1950s. However, this did not provide sufficient information to understand precisely the long-term effects of large scale energy transmission via microwaves. Proponents argued that with normal safety precautions there were no foreseeable adverse effects to humans nor unacceptable impacts on the Earth's atmosphere, flora and fauna. They said the impact was certainly preferable to that of nuclear waste and coal's carbon dioxide emissions. Opponents asserted that the paucity of data on microwave impact left society vulnerable to environmental damage of an unforeseen secondary or tertiary variety that could be catastrophic in view of the scale of SPS microwave transmissions. They also said that given the high cost of SPS and the dynamics of large scale technology the government should not fund a verification program to prove or disprove the various assertions. Proponents would convert a verification program into the first stage of actual development of SPS and create a snowball effect that would be difficult, if not impossible, to stop no matter what the results of the program. At this point SPS proponents, many of whom were from the engineering and physical sciences, felt a sense of dislocation. A natural step in the process of deciding upon a technological option was being questioned for reasons well outside the technology. It appeared that SPS had taken on symbolic value that transcended the hardware and pragmatic questions involved and much of the script of the SPS drama was being written elsewhere. A search for broader and deeper understanding was called for that required examining the values at play in the latter 70s. What were the underlying issues? What economic, social, technological, environmental, and political attitudes were SPS and energy technology in general eliciting? What forums could be developed to more clearly articulate and rationalize the debate, separating out and clarifying the engineering facts from other considerations? This search was important; if the final strategy adopted toward energy was misguided it could have catastrophic results in actual deprivation, social dislocation, gross inequities, and/or weakening the nation's security. Given the multiplicity of forces at play any initial effort to gain broad understanding would need to have modest goals. It would seek perspectives, insights, data, and innovative ideas as opposed to comprehensive syntheses of the overall situation. To this end a symposium was arranged for the 1980 Annual Meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Science, framed around “Soft and Hard Technology'' and asking the question whether there could be coexistence between the two. The success of the symposium stimulated the preparation of this volume which, as intended, is a collage of perspective, insight, data and, in one case, an innovative idea. Nandi Jasentuliyana and Robin A. Ludwig of the United Nations Secretariat present a case for SPS from the perspective of the developing countries. They note that for the developing world solar energy in general offers versatility, low environmental impact and a variety of socioeconomic advantages. While recognizing the cost and microwave effects issues the authors contend that SPS has the potential to
become a general solution to the developing world's energy problems and call for international cooperation in advancing this technology. Arnold B. Baker, a Senior Consultant of Atlantic Richfield, discusses various senarios for U.S. energy production in the 1980s and 1990s. Concerned with what occurred in the late 1970s, Dr. Baker argues for economically “rationalized” energy policies that “maximize the workings of the market and minimize government uncertainty.” This approach he says will hasten as much as anything the advancement of conservation and soft technology. Dr. Arthur Kantrowitz, former Chairman of the Board of Avco Everett Research Laboratory, and currently of Dartmouth College, argues for an innovative approach he developed in the 1970s to test the veracity of scientific assertions for or against hard and soft technologies. Known as the Science Court, it subjects opposing technical claims to the review of nonpartisan scientific judges and to the counter claims of the opposition utilizing strict judicial procedure. Following the proceedings the judges publish their opinions on the disputed technical information. Dr. Victor Ferkiss, Professor of Political Science at Georgetown University, presents a sophisticated discussion of the complex interactions among the soft vs. hard energy technologies and the values of freedom and equality. One of his major conclusions is that both classes of technologies have mixed consequences for these values. Dr. Jack D. Salmon, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of West Florida addresses the topic of Space Industrialization (SI) rather than energy per se. He argues that historically opening up “new worlds” have been combined governmental/private enterprise endeavors. SI can be developed best on an internationally decentralized basis even though the large scale, high technology is in the hands of a few developed nations. In the development process an accommodation between “private” vs. “collectivist” economic approaches would have to be made. REFERENCES 1. Peter E. Glaser, Power from the Sun: Its Future, Science, 162, 857-886, 1968. 2. Gerard K. O'Neill, The Colonization of Space, Physics Today, 27, September, 32-40, 1974. Gerard K. O'Neill, Space Colonies and Energy Supply to the Earth, Science, 190, 943-947, 1975. 3. Ernst Friedrich Schumacher, Small is Beautiful; Economics as if People Mattered, Harper and Row, New York, 1973. 4. Amory Lovins, Soft Energy Paths, Ballinger, Cambridge, 1977.
0191-9067/83 $3.00 + .00 Copyright 0 1984 SUNSAT Energy Council TOUGH TECHNOLOGY ARTHUR KANTROW1TZ Dartmouth College Thayer School of Engineering Hanover, New Hampshire 03755 INTRODUCTION Hard technology characterizes technology selected for survival in the marketplace and in a hostile international environment. Soft technology expresses deeply felt human drives for independence from central control of the necessities of life. This talk will emphasize that hard and soft technology are not diametrically opposed. The component common to both is their basis in scientific fact. Yet, so much of the hard/soft debate consists of assertions of scientific fact designed to create in the public mind and in lay media the impression that the scientific facts leave no room for the public to express their own value judgements. So many of these assertions lack frankness in confessing uncertainty and ignorance which has always been recognized and enforced as essential to meaningful scientific debate. The science court is intended to enforce this frankness so that the public can assess the scope which the state of scientific knowledge leaves for the expression of value preferences. Technology policy based on scientific facts determined by a process credible to substantial portions of the “hard” and “soft” factions I would call tough technology. Communication today is based on the myth of the unprejudiced expert. Real expertise requires years of commitment to a field and frequently involves an unshakable conviction that the field is beneficial to humanity. The commitment and the conviction insulate the expert and discredit claims to lack of prejudice. THE FRANKNESS RULE The existence of two opposed factions seeking to impose their values on the nation could be constructive or destructive. To make the dialog constructive, the public must be able to judge the validity or the attractiveness of the proposals offered. If proposition A is offered by group a and B by b, people can decide between A and B when descriptions by a and b differ only in areas where lay persons can adequately judge. If, however, a and b use different statements of scientific fact in their descriptions, it will not, in general, be possible for people to decide for themselves between these descriptions. We thus come to the familiar dilemma—which scientist do you believe? The scientific community prides itself on a traditional harshness in dealing with those who are not frank in confessing uncertainty and ignorance. Within the scientific community the frankness rule is enforced by encouraging vigorous discussion at scientific meetings and by sending papers submitted for publication to referees
known to be expert in the field. Communication within the scientific community is an adversary process in which those claiming an addition to knowledge always prepare themselves to deal with the public criticisms of competing experts who will not easily be persuaded of the validity of a new significant claim. The frankness rule applies however only to communications within the scientific community. The current practice when scientists speak to the public, essentially means that they only need worry about questions which will be addressed to them by non experts. Our public institutions can usually deal with conflicting claims of sophisticated scientists by examining their credentials. The bankruptcy of this practice is exhibited every time we see competing lists of Nobel Prize winners supporting opposing propositions. This practice is to be contrasted with procedures in the scientific community where (ideally at least) it is what a person says, not who says it, that is important. The examination of the validity of scientific factual statements for logical consistency or for correspondence with observations of nature avoids the bankruptcy of appeals to authority cited above, but it does require much more expertise and more time than the public and lay officials can devote to purely scientific matters. It is my position that when statements of scientific fact are needed for the rational making of public policy and are apparently disputed, it is the duty of the scientific community to provide some kind of due process for stating what is known, what the uncertainties are and what is currently unknown. The scientific community has its own form of due process for its internal communications, as was briefly described above. What is needed is to extend these internal procedures to provide scientific information to the public in a way that the scientific community and the public will find credible. To achieve this end I propose the following ethical principle to be enforced by the scientific community: Any scientist who addresses the public or lay officials on scientific facts bearing on public policy matters should stand ready to publicly answer the questions, not only from the public, but those from expert adversaries. The science court was proposed as an experimental first step in the implementation of this ethical principle. The procedures proposed have been described in many places, but since they have frequently been misunderstood, it might be worthwhile to briefly set them forward here again. Suppose that a public decision must be made between propositions A and B. (The function of the science court is not to make the decision or even to recommend a decision.) For this purpose we lean heavily on the groups a and b who are committed advocates of these propositions. We ask their representatives to approve the procedures, examine the scientific judges for prejudice, etc. We also expect them to prepare a list of factual assertions which they consider important for their side of the case, to accept or to challenge the factual statements made by their adversaries, and to publicly answer the questions of the most informed experts their adversaries can find. After this public procedure the judges write their opinions on any factual matters which still remain controversial. The publication of the agreed factual statements and the judges' opinions complete the procedure. COMMUNICATION IN THE PRESENCE OF CONTROVERSY It is remarkable that in recent decades characterized by strident rhetoric in conflicts involving apparent disagreements over scientific facts, no powerful constituency for the development of improved process has yet appeared. We have seen a
proliferation of organizations who claim credibility because of who they are rather than how they proceed. Thus, the National Academy of Sciences asserts that it is to be believed because it is an “elite organization.” The Office of Technology Assessment is to be believed because it is an independent agency of the U.S. Congress. “Public Interest” groups and Regulatory Agencies are to be believed because they exist only to protect the public interest. Industry is to be believed because of its expertise, etc. Philip Handler in addressing The National Academy Bicentennial Symposium reported the results as follows: But establishing truth with respect to technical controversy relevant to matters of public policy, and to do so in full public view, has proved to be a surprisingly difficult challenge to the scientific community. To our simple code must be added one more canon: When describing technological risks to the non-scientific public, the scientist must be as honest, objective, and dispassionate as he knows he must be in the more conventional, time-honored self-policing scientific endeavor. This additional canon has not always been observed. Witness the chaos that has come with challenges to the use of nuclear power in several countries. Witness, in this country, the cacophony of charge and counter-charge concerning the safety of diverse food additives, pesticides and drugs. We have learned that the scientist-advocate, on either side of such a debate, is likely to be more advocate than scientist and this has unfavorably altered the public view of both the nature of the scientific endeavor and the personal attributes of scientists. In turn, that has given yet a greater sense of urgency to the public demand for assurance that the risks attendant upon the uses of technology be appraised and minimized. And what a huge task that is! To begin this “huge task” the science court was proposed as an experimental means of approaching the problem of achieving higher credibility in the communication between the scientific community and the public. The credibility of its output would not depend entirely on the people involved but would lean on the credibility of a structure incorporating some of society's wisdom in dealing with controversy. EXPERIENCE WITH THE SCIENCE COURT The science court as presented here was formulated by a task force of a committee advisory to President Ford (1). It was suggested by the Task Force that a public meeting be held where opinions pro and con the science court experiment could be aired. This meeting was held 19-21 September 1976 in Leesburg, Virginia, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Commerce, The National Science Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. At this meeting the Task Force position was set forth by Richard Simpson, former Chairman of the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission, and anthropologist Margaret Mead agreed to present what was intended to be an opposition view. It turned out that by the time she got to the meeting Dr. Mead's views were certainly not opposed to the notion, and in her typical colorful manner she expressed the need for a new institution. We need a new institution. There isn't any doubt about that. The institutions we have are totally unsatisfactory. In many cases they are not only unsatisfactory, they involve a prostitution of science and a prostitution of the decision making process.
Her misgivings about the science court were consistent with an observation she has made about social innovation generally — that eventually all social innovations are corrupted and she pointed out that it would be essential that the science court be carefully protected from early corruption. The science court was supported by numerous distinguished people and a transcript of the proceedings is available from the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Technical Information Service, Washington, DC, Document No. PB-261 305. During the 1976 Presidential Campaign development of a science court procedure was endorsed by both President Ford and candidate Carter. It has received numerous other endorsements, among them the endorsement of the Committee of Scientific Society Presidents which includes twenty-eight of the leading scientific societies of the United States. During the 1980 presidential campaign, candidate Reagan promised (2): In addition, I will explore the feasibility of a ‘Science Court,' to help arrange public discussions of controversial scientific issues. This will help guide the public, the Congress, and the executive branch. The purpose would be public exposure, not decision making. The development of the science court procedure to a point of general utility is a substantial undertaking and thus far only tentative beginnings in this direction have been undertaken. Several examples of such tentative beginnings have come to my attention: [1 ] One interesting case was called to my attention by Dr. John C. Bailar then of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda. Bailar had been conducting a campaign to reduce the use of x-ray examination for detecting breast cancer in women under 50. He reported that some of the relevant medical organizations had refused to consider the possibility that this procedure was doing more harm than good. He let it be known that he intended to pursue a science court procedure to bring out the facts in this matter and he reports: . . . the very possibility of a science court may have a beneficial effect on the resolution of technical disagreement. The matter was settled, at least temporarily, and guidelines restricting the mass screening of women under 50 have been issued. |2| The claim has been made that low frequency electromagnetic fields have deleterious physiological effects on plants, animals and humans. These effects have been advanced as reasons for opposing powerful, extremely low frequency, radio transmitters and more recently long distance power transmission lines. A controversy arose in Minnesota concerning the impact of a transmission line with a group of farmers resorting to vigorous civil disobedience to prevent its construction. Minnesota Governor Perpich offered to form a science court to provide factual scientific information which might be helpful in resolving the dispute. He attempted to use the prestige of his office to persuade both the farmers and the utility companies to accept a resolution by a science court of the problems of health and safety. The farmers insisted on two alterations of the procedure, both of which were intended to politicize the process. First, they insisted that questions of need for the power line be brought up before a science court as well as
health and safety issues. These questions of need obviously would make the disentangling of facts and values more difficult. Secondly, the farmers' representatives proposed that Governor Perpich himself should sit in judgment rather than any panel of scientists. This would again obviously politicize the determination of scientific facts and I think was properly opposed by the Governor. In connection with the power line dispute Professor Allan Mazur (3) has made an attempt to: Promote an exchange in the dispute over possible harmful effects from the electromagnetic fields of high voltage transmission lines, using the science court mechanism . . . Specifically, in cooperation with the leading scientific advocates of the deleterious effects of electromagnetic fields, Andrew Marino and Robert Becker, he made an attempt to phrase their scientific claims in language which would be acceptable as falsifiable statements suitable for use as claims in a science court proceeding. This effort was remarkably successful. However, Mazur's efforts to induce proponents of the power line, who did not believe in the importance of the claims of Becker and Marino, to participate were unsuccessful. Obviously he lacked the authority to require a confrontation. However, Mazur's work indicates very clearly the feasibility of the translation of highly partisan statements into clear statements of fact. [3] The third case which has been brought to my attention is an effort by the Division of Magnetic Fusion Energy of ERDA (now the Department of Energy), to evaluate a series of magnetic fusion geometries other than their two principal directions (Tokamaks and Mirror Machines). They said that An adversary of science court-like procedure was used for arriving at judgments on the criteria for each concept. They reported that the procedure was efficient and useful (4). These three cases provide a little added insight into what needs to be done before the development of science court-like procedures can be undertaken in earnest. First, the Minnesota case illustrated the need for enough authority to bring the adversaries to present and substantiate their cases in the presence of opposition as is required in the science court procedure. It became apparent that Governor Perpich was unable to bring about this confrontation. However, in the later history of the dispute, it was noted that the discussions of health and safety issues were muted and the opposition of the farmers was stated much more simply in that they did not want the power lines to cross their lands for esthetic and practical reasons. In the breast cancer case it was clear that Dr. John Bailar as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute had sufficient authority so that his proposal to set up a science court procedure had to be taken seriously by his opponents. The result was institution of “concensus” procedures by the National Institutes of Health. In the magnetic fusion energy case a funding agency obviously had power to require the confrontation. In the power line controversy it was perfectly clear that while authority was lacking to force a scientific confrontation the very threat of such a confrontation may have been instrumental in simplifying that dispute.
DIFFICULTIES IN APPLYING THE SCIENCE COURT TO REAL CONTROVERSIES Experience has exhibited a number of difficulties most of which will have to be faced in any attempt to improve communication between the scientific community and the public: [1| There is an array of interests vested in the present “flexible” system including politicians and industrialists who utilize confusion about the state of scientific knowledge in defending their policies, scientists whose positions depend on their willingness to be cooperative in disregarding the frankness rule when supporting partisan policies, and institutions financially supported by doing “studies” for sponsors comfortable with their previous output. [21 Distinguished scientists who are quite prepared to answer pointed questions from their expert adversaries in scientific meetings are frequently unwilling to publicly answer the questions of their expert adversaries when they make scientific statements relevant to public policy matters. This unwillingness was responsible for the dilution of the science court procedures begun by Bailar at the National Institutes of Health to the present “Concensus Procedures.” Perhaps this unwillingness is related to the generally low esteem for the treatment of scientific matters by the legal courts. In the science court it will be necessary to exhibit that ad hominem attacks will not be tolerated and that rules of procedure similar to those in a scientific meeting will be enforced. [3] Perhaps the most important difficulty in implementing the science court is exhibited by the frequent observation that the procedure will be welcomed by partisans who see themselves as underdogs. Partisans who see themselves winning with procedures as they are will resist the introduction of new procedures whose outcome is unpredictable. The impetus for improvement in communication between the scientific community and the public will have to come from those who are persuaded that procedural improvements are needed to adequately manage our very powerful technology. [4] It must be recognized that before the science court can attain its full utility a considerable development would be required. Thus it will be necessary to develop procedures which are not only acceptable to all parties but will as perceived as leading to a full statement of the current knowledge. It will also be necessary to develop the profession of scientific advocate with adequate protection for those who defend viewpoints unpopular with powerful interest groups. CONCLUSION It is my position that Science and Technology play so large a role in our lives that it is imperative that in its governance we begin the transition made centuries ago in other important areas — from a government of men to a government of laws. The development of procedures and institutions devoted to credible communication between the scientific community and the public, when there is controversy in the scientific community and when the information is needed for the making of public policy, could play a role in this important transition. The science court is offered as a beginning step in this development.
REFERENCES 1. A. Kantrowitz el al., The Science Court Experiment: An Interim Report, Science 193, 653-656, 1976. 2. Presidential Candidates Answer Science Policy Questions, Physics Today 33, 50, 1980. 3. A. Mazur, A. Marino and R. Becker, Airing Technical Disputes: A Case Study. Presented at the AAAS Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., Feb. 13, 1977. See also A. Mazur, The Dynamics of Technical Controversy, Communications Press, Washington, DC, 1981. 4. An Evaluation of Alternate Magnetic Fusion Concepts, Div. of Magnetic Fusion Energy, ERDA, 1977.
digitized by the Space Studies Institute ssi.org
0191-9067/83 $3.00 + .00 Copyright ® 1984 SUNSAT Energy Council VALUE CHOICES AND TECHNOLOGICAL OPTIONS VICTOR FERKISS Department of Government Georgetown University Washington, DC 20057, USA Current debate about alternative energy futures for the United States and the world as a whole has focused primarily on technological and economic aspects of choices among energy options (1).* However, an important undercurrent in much of the discussion is the purported ethical, political and social implications of the adoption of various technological options. Proponents of a “soft” energy strategy are especially prone to argue that the technological options we choose today will have necessary and predictable consequences for the attainment of cherished values in the future (2-1 l).t Implicit in all these arguments — and sometimes explicit as well — is the contention that particular technologies have essentially simple and direct effects on basic political and social values — nuclear energy will lead to centralized political power or help the poor for example — and that societies can and do seek to give exclusive priority to the implementation of particular values in making their political decisions (12)4 Just as it is sometimes argued that societies must choose between a hard or soft energy path on technical and/or economic grounds so they must — concurrently and as a corollary of their energy choices — decide among conflicting political and social values to be sought. Much of this argument is prefigured in the literature on “appropriate technology” by thinkers such as E. F. Schumacher (13-14). From these assumptions it follows logically that for a society to choose among various technological options it must also in effect choose among alternative social and political futures, and that the latter choice like the first must necessarily be unequivocal. Some have even argued, like Robert L. Heilbroner and Harrison Brown, that the survival of our civilization in an era of energy constraints will *See (1), in which political aspects are treated directly only on pp. 484-485 and 640. • This paper will not deal with the basic question of whether or not the total amount of energy available has a direct relationship to particular political values or to lifestyle generally. It has usually been assumed that there is a direct relationship between the amount of energy available and democracy in the broadest sense, but how direct the relationship is between energy levels and lifestyles is problematical. See (7). Not all observers would accept the idea that high energy consumption is desirable, of course. See (8-10). For a broad recent perspective on energy as such see (II). tWe will deal in this paper solely with the political and social implications of various energy strategies, not their environmental effects.
necessitate some form of totalitarianism or quasi-totalitarianism, or at any rate the end of constitutional democracy as we have known it (15-16).* It is the thesis of this paper that the above assumptions and judgments, though widely shared, are in fact false. Not only may it be technologically and economically possible to follow a “mixed” energy strategy for the future, it is also possible — indeed normal and necessary — to follow a mixed value strategy as well. Technological options, it will be argued, are highly equivocal as to value consequences. This is not a problem for political and social decision makers, however, since throughout history societies — including our own — have pursued a mixed strategy of value implementation and can and probably will continue to do so in the future. We shall illustrate how this mixed strategy has operated in the past by focusing on the values of freedom and equality, and attempt to show how the implementation for these values of various projected energy strategies are necessarily equivocal but not undesirably so. The debate over the alternative sources of energy is as confused, overlapping and cross-cutting as it is often bitter. But increasingly there has emerged a tendency for proponents of virtually all positions to posit or accept the existence of two broad types or “paths” of energy production — the “hard” path and the “soft” path. The former stresses continued emphasis on such by now conventional sources of energy as coal, oil, and nuclear power, while the latter is associated with a wide variety of solar or otherwise “renewable” energy sources including wind power, geothermal energy, biomass conversion, active and passive solar systems, and similar non- conventional means.t My concern in this paper is not to enter the debate between the proponents of the two paths on the level of technological or economic considerations but rather to attempt to clarify the debate which is occurring on the level of philosophy and politics, explicitly or, even more often, implicitly. To discuss the philosophical and political implications of alternative energy futures requires coming to grips with two closely related but nevertheless distinct and independent sets of issues. One of these hinges on the empirical analysis of alleged causal relationships between alternative energy sources and social values and institutions. Will increased coal mining lead to greater injury among workers? Will “cogeneration” make it possible for small businesses to survive rising energy prices by consuming their own wastes? Though far from simple, these are essentially questions of fact which can, in theory at least, be resolved through the collection and analysis of data. But there is also another set of issues which must be resolved which has to do with political and ethical values themselves and their interrelationships. To what extent are different values incompatible or complementary? Insofar as values such as protection of individual lives or greater economic equality are incompatible which should be preferred? What is the proper ethical relationship between security of nuclear shipments and protection of individual rights of movement and speech? What are the appropriate criteria or mechanisms for making such judgments and choices? *Heilbroner writes that "candor compels me to suggest that the passing through the gauntlet ahead may be possible only under governments capable of rallying obedience far more effectively than would be possible in a democratic setting" (15). Brown writes that “it would seem likely that if industrial civilization survives it will become increasingly totalitarian in nature" (16). tLovins says of soft technologies that “They rely on reversible energy flows . . . They are diverse . . . They are flexible and relatively low-technology, which does not mean unsophisticated but, rather, easy to understand and use without esoteric skills, accessible rather than arcane . . . They are matched in scale and in geographic distribution to end-use needs . . . They are matched in energy quality to end-use needs ..." (6).
VALUE CHOICES: FREEDOM AND EQUALITY The literature on values and value choice is vast and subtle. Even if one accepts the proposition that the very use of the term value, instead of earlier terms such as principles or goods, is in fact a modern development which implies movement from objective norms to subjective preferences in the ethical arena, any discussion of values is haunted by the ghosts of more than two thousand years of debate over moral philosophy in the Western world alone. To adequately place current controversies in the context of the history of that debate would be an enormous task. Accordingly, the propositions about values set forth in this paper will be presented in a somewhat arbitrary fashion, and must stand or fall on the basis of how much sense they make to the reader. Seemingly, the two most fundamental values held by Americans (and probably by most contemporary Western men and women) are freedom and equality. Actually, of course, these two values are closely related and in some sense interdependent. It is hard to be free if you have a superior with potential power over you, and hard to be equal if you are not free, since your lack of freedom usually implies someone else's superior power. Like most statements about values in the real world, this one requires qualification: it is possible to conceive of a superiority which does not imply domination (for example, a superiority in musical talent) just as it is to conceive of an equality in which freedom is not lost to individual superiors but to the totality of one's coequals. Indeed, much of the theory underlying liberal democracy implies or requires just such an assumption. However, in the realm of practical politics, freedom (liberty) and equality have ordinarily been the rallying cries of opposing groups with divergent interests or concerns. Both freedom and equality are highly ambiguous terms and both — freedom, especially, perhaps — are the basis of other “values.” In the case of equality there is the conflict between “formal” equality (equality before the law or equality of opportunity) and actual equality, often today called “equality of result." This conflict of concepts of equality is at the root of most of the debate about race relations in the contemporary United States. The legal possibility that every American boy (or girl) can grow up to be president is a matter of formal equality before the law of the constitution. But a situation in which every student in a class automatically gets an “A” involves equality of result. The same thing is true of a situation wherein grades are distributed in terms of any characteristics other than the work of the course itself (see (17-19) on equality). Freedom is even more complex conceptually, with a host of definitions and emphases extant (see (20-22) on freedom). But most of these boil down to the contrast between freedom considered as lack of constraint imposed by other human beings (no one is sitting on me and holding me down) and freedom considered as ability to exercise power over others and the external world (I am strong enough to sit up without help) (23).* These different views of freedom are often expressed as being differences between “freedom from” and “freedom to.” The political history of Western Europe in the modern era is in large measure the story of the growing centralization of governmental power at the expense of the freedom (autonomy) of lower units of government, of the replacement of the virtual anarchy of feudal Europe by the rising nation-state system. This has been accompanied by a growing uniformity of law (and language and culture as well of course at *This is classically stated by the father of modern liberalism, Thomas Hobbes, in his Leviathan (23). The book was, of course, written originally in the 17th century.
national levels) and also by a decreasing power of nonstate social institutions such as the church and the family. But why did this happen? In part, of course, the loss of local liberties and the transference of power to the new dynastic rulers and their bureaucracies was the consequence of a drive for power for its own sake on the part of the ruling groups in the rising nation states (24). But these rulers were often able to obtain widespread public support for their increasing centralization of power because this trend also accorded with the value aspirations of their subjects. Peasants felt better able to secure justice in the King's courts than in those dominated by the local nobility, with whom they were often in dispute. Individuals sought to escape the oppression of hierarchical churches and rigid family structures in the greater equality provided by the status of citizens of a wider realm. In large measure the growth of the modern nation state represents a deliberate sacrifice of the value of freedom for that of equality. But put another way, people could be said to have perceived the opposition between group freedom (local autonomy) and individual, personal freedom and given priority to the latter. Equality in this context contributed to freedom. What has historically been true in the Western world generally has also been true of the United States specifically, especially perhaps in recent decades. Originally it was the more egalitarian Jeffersonians who stood for “states' rights” against the more elitist Federalists who stood for a strong national government. But the extension of federal power over state and local governments and traditional social institutions since the Civil War has largely been under the banner of equality. First of all came the freeing of the slaves by the Lincoln administration and the radical Republicans during reconstruction, but by the time of Woodrow Wilson in the early twentieth century it was the party of Jefferson that was pushing equality, raising minimum wages and protecting racial minorities and disadvantaged groups such as women, children and the elderly. What happened in politics has happened in economics as well. The self-governing work place where rough equality among owners and workmen often prevailed has been replaced by the assembly line; the small farmer or merchant as economic unit of production has given way to oligopolistic and even monopolistic firms; and economic power has become more and more centralized. Again the question arises, why? Once again the answer is that, in addition to the drive for wealth and economic power on the part of the businessmen, workers and consumers alike were eventually convinced that the new economic system was producing affluence — in part precisely because of its concentration — and affluence was interpreted as meaning greater equality of consumption than had existed previously. The result was that economic freedom like political freedom was to be sacrificed on the altar of equality. An important qualification must be made at this juncture in the argument. We do not, of course, really know very much about the extent to which people value equality, much less how much they may have valued it at specific periods in the past. But such evidence as we have would lead us to believe that it has been a driving force in Western — especially American — society for several hundred years, and the desire for equality seems to be spreading throughout the world. We know perhaps even less about how much people value freedom, since as we have seen it is an even more complex concept. But historical experience seems to strongly suggest certain tentative conclusions. In the political realm most people seem to prefer “freedom from" to “freedom to" — that is, they are less concerned about how much direct input they can have into governmental decision making (witness increasingly low voter turnouts in American national elections) than how the output of government
affects their lives. They seem to want the government to let them alone (“get off their backs” in one recently potent political slogan) even if sometimes they seem to want it to do more controlling of others. “That government is best which governs least,” the old Jeffersonian formula, seems to still be dominant as a value statement, at least in America, no matter how inconsistently it may be applied by its adherents (the people who rant against “big government” are often the same people who will exult when the space shuttle goes up and they can claim “we” are “number one”). Attitudes toward the economic realm seem almost the opposite. Here “freedom to” could be said to be more highly valued than “freedom from.” Most people unquestioningly accept the basic economic institutions of society which impinge on their working lives; having a boss, being forced to take a job or (usually) endure economic deprivations, being subject to work discipline and hierarchy, being paid in fixed wages or salaries, etc. Restricted options in the work process are rarely resented. Even the businessman who most vigorously fights against government regulation and “red tape” is often quite content to be under the control of large corporations, indeed it is often the powerful corporations which are most opposed to government regulation. What is resented are perceived restrictions not on productive activities but on consumption, not being able to purchase what is available on the market (or what might become available) with what money the purchaser has. Black markets spring up more readily than demands for workers' control over the workshop. “Freedom to” as a consumer has a clearly higher priority than “freedom from” as a producer, unlike the situation in the political realm where “freedom from” as a subject is preferred to “freedom to” as a citizen. None of the above statements can be scientifically demonstrated, even within the rather loose canons of validation currently employed in the social sciences. But if, on an impressionistic basis, they seem to be reflections of reality, they can perhaps help to illuminate the current debate about energy futures. ENERGY FUTURES: SOFT VS. HARD The major claims made on behalf of soft as opposed to hard energy sources is that the former as opposed to the latter make possible greater decentralization of economic power, both in the areas of production and of consumption (25).* The windmill or solar collector (especially of course the home solar collector) is more decentralized than the electric grid. In addition, an economy based on hard energy sources — above all nuclear power — will have political implications in that it will require tight governmental controls over individual behavior because of security and safety considerations (26-27). Generally speaking, advocates of the hard path have not sought directly to refute these claims, but have rather ignored them as irrelevant, giving priority to economic considerations. Other claims made by soft energy proponents are that hard energy paths imply international competition for scarce resources, leading to the danger of war, or that *On the relationship of centralization of electricity by various means (including nuclear) to politics and economics see M. Messing, H.P. Friesema and D. Morell (25). After a complex analysis of numerous case studies and changing patterns the authors conclude that “At the present, however, both centralized and decentralized system planning exists; both involve risks of technical feasibility and long-rut. costs; and either can be justified on the basis of favorable assumptions. Politically, decisions to centralize or decentralize the next generation of energy systems will ultimately affect not only the reliability and costs of our energy supplies but the structures of our political systems as well."
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTU5NjU0Mg==