Evening star., 1939-02-26
i. S. Water Resources Bulwark
Nation Against Power Famine
Americans Prohigate MASTERS of Energy, Find
Some Solace Despite Dire Predictions
of Other Failures
By Thomas X. Henry.

y
The United States is burning more
than 600000000 tons of coal year. 1t
is using about $4,000 100000 kilowatt
hours of water-power electricity. 1t is
pouring 1850, 0,oOo,0 900 barrels of petroleum,
in one form or another, into its gas tanks,
oil heaters and all the machines and
gadgets which consume oil and gasoline.
1t is using 1880 900, 900 900 cubic feet of
natural gas.
From all these sources comes power
equivalent to the work of $50 horses for
eight hours day. six days per week. for
every family in the Nation 1t is so
plentiful and so cheap that the majority
Of Americans use it with reckless aban-
don without giving much thought to
where it comes from. The housewife
pushes button. The room is flooded
with light. She gives never thought to
the fact that the result she has accom-
plished in split second in her grand
mothers day would have required at
least eight hours of hard work by an
able-bodied man.
Waste Warnings Echo.
Americans use power recklesslv be-
cause they have so much of it. Other
nations are not quite such profigate
spenders. Great Britain uses only two-
thirds as much, Germany only half as
much, Japan only tenth as much. But
for generation or more there have been
prophets of famine to come-pessimisiic
engineers and economists who have man.
aged to remember little of the plain
addition and subtractions of their ele-
mentary arithmetic. Power, they have
been warning, is not inexhaustible. It
is no more so than money in the bank
1t all had to be put there in the first
place.
Mother Earth spent 1000 100000 years.
roughly speaking, to bank the energy
which a few wastrel generations are
spending. So far as persons now alive
are concerned, most of them admitted.
1t made very little difference. Thev
couldn't possibly dissipate all their hertz
age, all the earnings of nature in build
ing forests and hewing them down in
raising up mountains, in building hydro
carbons out of sunshine and air.
Some Of the predictions beyond much
doubt have been too pessimistic. There
Is enough power left for long time to
come. Some of it-that derived from
running water-is theoretically mex
haustible. But it is becoming harder
and harder to obtain easily and cheaplv.
Take coal for example. Within the
continental borders of the Nation. it
Is conservatively estimated, there are
about 100000 100000 tons of it still
untouched. That is enough to last for
about 1000 years at the present rate of
consumption, and it would be foolish to
worry much about the sad fate of de-
scendants in the year 1000. BY that time
they will not need coal Long before
then. presumably, the new atomic energy
which man first succeeded in tapping
here in Washington a couple of weeks
ago will be available.
But it isn't matter of simple division.
More than half the total is made up of
grade bituminous coal and Ignite.
Almost 10 per cent of it lies under the
semi-arid plains of the Midwest or in
the Rocky Mountains, far from centers
of population and industry. 1t will be
costly to mine it. costly to transport it,
and lot of it will be required. About
IS per cent of the present production is
from coal fields east of the Mississippi
River which contains only 80 per cent
of the total. One-fourth of the rich
coal reserve of Pennsylvania already is
exhausted.
Cost to Enter Picture
The picture might be considerably
worse had it rot been for the depression
which shut down so many coal-burning
factories. The progress Of depletion
has been slowed up by the substitution
of gasoline for steam transportation and
by the substitution of oil for heating.
But, even at its slower pace. the situa-
ton still is basically unchanged. The
thing to worry about is not how de-
scendants 40 generations hence are 60
ing to run their locomotives and heat
their houses. 1t is a notable increase
in the cost of coal, perhaps within this
generation, and upon the cost of coal
depends the price of most of the artifacts
that enter into the daily life of the
average individual.
The whole situation has just been
resurveyed by the National Resources
Committee, at the request of President
Roosevelt. The basic data have been
provided upon which plans for con-
servation must be based to prevent much
higher costs of living in the compara-
lively near future. Americans today
can afford to wear silk stockings and
drive automobiles and eat tenderloin
steaks because relatively cheap power,
entering into the production of these
things in numerous ways, makes them
cheap 1t is one of their chief in
gradients.
But coal, after all, is just a minor
worry for the present. Science doubtless
will have devised ways of harvesting and
utilizing the low-grade beds before the
pressing need for them actually arises.
Petroleum-that is, gasoline and Oils
quite another problem.
Discovery May Delay Famine.
There are now, the committee esti-
mates reserves of Is 600 600 900 barrels