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The Mercer Cluster "Part Of The News That's Fit To Print" Volume LV Mercer University, Macon, Georgia February 12. 1974 No. 12 ENERGY RETREAT STUDIES TWO ENERGY CRISES TONIGHT Nationally recognised experts and authorities on the energy crisis and environmental questions will partici pate in a retreat which Mercer Uni versity's Alternate Freshman Pro gram is sponsoring today and tomor row at the FFA-FHA Camp at Cov ington. Dr. Lawrence Rocks and Dr. Rich ard P. Runyon, authors of "The Early Crisis." the textbook which* the AFP Is using, will attend the retreat and appear on panels and in discussion groups. A nationally known writer and Middle East oil specialist, formerly with Standard Oil of California, Chris topher Rand of San Francisco, Calif., will talk on the oil situation in the Middle East, as will other experts who were mentioned more hilly in last week's "Cluster." The AFP has been discussing the energy crisis this quarter in various ways. Dr. Theodore Nordenhaug of the Philosophy Department has been especially interested in the topic and prepared the following comments in order to facilitate discussion at the retreat. TWO ENERGY CRISES There are two energy crises: the current energy crisis in the indus trialized West and the ultimate, es chatological energy crisis toward which the world v is heading. I. The ultimate energy crisis is an aspect of the Environmental Crisis (F.e., the conflict of social organization with the biological base), and it con sists simply in the fact that growing world energy demands threaten to de- Dr. Mead Discusses Youth In Society One of the world's foremost cul tural anthropologists, Dr. Margaret Mead will speak tomorrow night, Wednesday! February 13 at the Grand Opera House here in Macon. The lec ture is sponsored by the Macon Jun ior College Artists and Lectures Com mittee and is open to the public free of charge. Entitled "Youth in Socie ty", the lecture will begin at 8:00 p.m. Dr. Mead is known primarily for her early work among the various tribes in the South Pacific at a time when little was known of their cul tural traditions. Recently, she has begun to study the relationship of youth to society. Authof^nT numerous books and hundreds of scholarly arti cles, Dr. Mead’s most current publi cations are her autobiography, Black berry Winter, and Culture and Com mittment a detailed discussion of the youth dilemma. She is also the author of a regular column in Redbook, a magazine for women. Now living in New York, Dr. Mead is currently serving as the Curator Emeritus of Ethnology at the Ameri can Museum of Natural History in New York City. She is also a special lecturer in Anthropology «*t Columbia Vaivusity. „ plete the supply of natural resources required for the production and dis tribution of energy. It is very difficult to provide a time table for the ultimate energy crisis. All forecasting depends on two sets of estimates: energy producing nat ural resource reserves estimates (how much oil, gas, coal, uranium, etc., is there) and growth of demand esti mates (at what accelerating rates will we use the resource up). This can be illustrated by the oil reserves prob lem : generous geological estimates suggest that up until now the world has used up approximately 1/7 of all the oil in the earth. If there were no increase in the rate of usage, or some decrease, this supply might last well over one hundred and fifty years. If, on the other hand, the world demand grows at rates that are project!^, (generally rate* that would keep* economists hippy about the GNP), the remaining oil could be gone by the-be*, f , j ginning of the next century. - Similar illustrations can be given for all other natural resources. Now some natural resources are practically infinite. Solar power, nu clear breeding, arid nuclear fusion are examples. With these resources we face other problems. Solar power is diffuse. Harnessing it and converting it to other usable mechanical forms of energy, however, drains other natu ral resources: aluminum, steel, cop per, nickel, cadmium. Nuclear breed er reactors will make more fuel than they use up. They require, however, great initial quantities of enriched uranium, a scarce and costly re source. Moreover, apparently the amount of energy required to enrich the uranium is great compared to the energy produced. It might require thirty years lead time to begin to show real benefits from this process. (At the moment the AEC uses more elec tricity producing fuel for nuclear reactors than the reactors now operat ing produce). Also, cooling large capacity nuclear reactors is a prob lem of incredible dimensions. A 25,000 megawatt reactor would also require the entire annual river flow of the United States to cool it. Nuclear fus ion is not e^en in the experimental stages as an alternative, so no one can even guess whet ..atural resource and environmental drains it would be responsible for. One important equation in estimat ing the potential of any new energy technology is the energy input-output ratio. This figure is not mentioned much, but it could conceivably place absolute limits on new technologies. It takes energy to get energy. Every energy source should be evaluated in terms of how much energy it will take to produce energy. Nuclear energy and the production of oil shale would appear to be examples of energy tech nologies where the ratio is very high. Economics deal with the cost of ener gy production, but so far it is not ob vious that costs reflect the energy in- \put. because up until now most forms /of energy have been cheap. Continued or* page 4 Black Poet Alice Walker will be the featured speaker February 22 at 10:00 a. m. A former SNCC associate, her latest book is called "Revolutionary Petunias." English, Black Studies Present: Alice Walker: Blooming Gloriously I write aLthe old men I knew Andi the young.men I loved And of the gold toothed women Mighty of arm Who dragged us all To. church. <. This poem, “In These Dissenting Times," opens Alice Walker’s most recent volume of verse, Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems, and sets the theme for the initial section of the book, a series of reflections stretching back to childhood and early family memories of Eatonton, Geor gia. On February 22 Ms. Walker re turns to her Middle Georgia environs as the featured speaker at 10:00 a.m. in the Chapel, sponsored by the Eng lish Sc Black Studies Departments. In addition to Revolutionary Petun ias. Alice Walker has published an earlier collection of verse. Once: a novel. The Third Life of Grange Cipe- land; Langston Hughas. a biography for children, and, most recently. In Love and Tr ruble, -a collection of short stories about the lives of black women. Ms. Walker, bom in 1944 the youngest of eight children of shar''- cripping parents, attended Spelman College in Atlanta and received a B.A. in 1965 from Sarah Lawrence College, where she is now a member of the Board of Trustees. She hos taught at Tougaloo College, Jackson State Col lege, Wellesley and the University of Massachusetts. She now resides in Jackson, Mississippi. Describing Revolutionary Petunias in >a brief preface, Alice Walker says, “These poems are about Revilution- aries and Lovers; and about the loss of compassion, trust, and the ability to expand in love that marks the end of hopeful strategy. Whether in love or revolution. They are also about (and for) those few embattled souls who remain painfully committed to beauty and to love even*while facing the firing squad." Dedicated "humbly for George Jackson,” “for Winson Hudson and Fannie Lou Hamer whose strength and compassion I- cherish," and “for my heroes, heroines, and friends in early SNCC whose courage and beauty burned me forever,” Rev olutionary Petunias combines bitter sweet recollections of the beauty and anguish of growing up black in rural Georgia with poems of fierce and gen tle loves, tears and sad smiles, and the simultaneous magnificence and spitefulness of “the movement." In Love and Troubla searches the lives of southern black women, wrenched by the non-life of those livq£, whipped by the violence done daily to their womanhood and their humanness. In these tales the mun dane stands transfigured, becoming grotesque; the outrageously funny leaves one sobbing. The book is lov ing and hurtful, and, as June Jordan writes, describes ". . . the hour-by hour agony of not knowing and so not loving. It is the pain of never being able to say; Here I Am and Therefore Love Me: child to poMpt, man to wo man, black to white, poor to hateful, hating powerful." Alice Walker, black, woman, Geor gian, says it all in a self-portrait which concludes Revolutionary Pe tunias: “The Nature of This Flower I* to Bloom” Rebellious. Living. Against the Elemental Crush. A Song of Color Blooming For Deserving Eyes: Blooming Gloriously For its Self, y Revolutionary Petunia.