What's This About Solar Energy? C. Carson

Clarence B. Carson WhatsThis About Solar Energy? Now don't get me wrong; I am a still the case, it follows ineluctably devotee of solar energy. As a matter that all the energy we use is solar of fact, I wouldn't use any other kind. energy. I have a total solar energy home. I This mini-lesson in science and a heat with it, cool with it, cook with goodly number of the remarks which it, and run all my appliances on it. follow would probably be unneces More, my lawn mower and automo-sary if it were not for the fact that bile run on solar energy. Nor is it some contemporary usage has intro going too far to say that I run duced considerable confusion into the on solar energy myself, when I run. matter. The phrase ((solar energy" So do all ·the other members of my has been specialized, at least jour family. nalistically, to refer to energy obSo do you. So does everyone else. tained directly from the sun. Ifthose We have no choice in the matter. All who use it that way would modify this I take to be true, that is, unless the phrase, call it ((direct solar en there is a new science which goes ergy," say, the confusion might be along with the ((new math," and the avoided. But if my s~spicions are science I was taught has been drast-well founded, I think those who use ically modified. What I learned when it this way are more or less deliber I was in school was that ((the sun is . ately avoiding the distinctions which the source of all energy." If that is would not only remove the confusion but also remove much of the Dr. Carson has written and taught extensively, spe-drive behind the movement for the ciallzing in American intellectual history. He is a frequent contributor to The Freeman. use of direct solar energy.

131 132 THE FREEMAN March There is a missionary zeal about many of the proponents of direct so lar energy. It is almost as if they have just discovered the sun and are eager to exploit all its potentialities. If we could just find ways to tap this marvelous source of energy, they are proclaiming, we would have at our beck and call a nearly unlimited source of energy. And, it would be free. That is the crux of the matter: it would be free. Or, to put it more precisely, direct solar energy is free, though the vantage point from which it may be received may not be. Once, I wrote a chapter of a book called ttThe Flight from Economics."! The enthusiasm for direct solar energy looks to me like another verse in it. Recognized Uses Before subjecting this heady vi sion of free energy to some dashes of cold water, however, it is in order to make some qualifications. It is well that we should attend to ways in which direct solar energy can be ob tainedand used to advantage. Un doubtedly, there is much to be gained in constructing buildings, for exam ple, in situating them and locating windows so as to get heat and light from the sun at the times of day and year when they are most wanted.

Astute use of insulation can greatly aid, too, in keeping the heat out when it is not wanted and inside when it is. It may be, too, as I have been told, that there are excellent possibilities in heating water for use in the home by the sun. There may be a goodly number of possible uses of direct solar energy which we have hardly exploited. If so, well and good. It is no part of my purpose here to denigrate what has been done, is being done, or may be discovered along these lines. Now that these qualifications have been got out of the way we can move on to the dashes of cold water. First, there is nothing new about the use of direct solar energy. Man has been heated by the rays of the sun since he has been around on this planet. Ever since he has worn clothes, he has been to some degree insulated from its rays and had about him a sort of shell which stored such heat as got in. Dwellings and other build ings have been at least partially heated by the sun for millennia and served as insulation to store the heat at night. More, the breezes and winds which have cooled him, which have been used to draw his water and propel his boats on occasions, are set in motion in some fashion by the sun. The water which he has used in a variety of ways has been heated by the sun, drawn into the atmo sphere by the heat of the sun, and released as rain when it was cooled.

Second, all the proposals for the greater use of direct solar energy with which I am familiar involve the use of things that are scarce. That is, they involve the use of land, 1981 WHAT'S THIS ABOUT SOLAR ENERGY? 133 labor, and capital. These are all scarce, must be allocated, and thus necessarily entail economic deci sions. Third, there are severe natural limitations on the use of direct solar energy. The sun is only around for a portion of the day; that portion var ies with the time of year, and even when it is around it may be ob scured by clouds or chilled by winds. Moreover, when it is avail~ble at greatest intensity, it is apt to be too hot for comfort, and its direct rays will fade and warp many materials. In short, there are two huge prob lems connected with the use of di rect solar energy. One is often de scribed as the problem of storage. The other, not so often discussed, is having it available in the· concen tration wanted.

NatureSolvesMany Problems Happily, these problems, which may be so costly of solution as to be practically insurmountable so ,long as they are approached in terms of direct solar energy, are. regularly partially solved for us by nature. However, I would like to enlist the aid of the great Austrian economist of the turn of the century, Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk, in making my exposition of it. Bohm-Bawerk had a fascinating insight into the means by which goods can best be made available when and where they are wanted. He called it the uroundabout method of production." He in troduced this concept in order to de fine capital, but it seems to me even more appropriate to the problems raised by the proponents of direct solar energy. The· roundabout method is best described in the words of the author himself as they have been so felici tously made available in English by Mr. George Huneke and Professor Hans Sennholz. Here is his descrip tion: A farmer needs and desires drinking water. There is a spring at some distance from his house. In order to meet his re quirements he may follow anyone ofsev eral procedures. He may go to the spring and drink from his cupped hands. That is the most direct way. Satisfaction is the immediate consequence of his expendi ture of labor. But it is inconvenient, for our farmer must travel the distance to the spring as often during the day as he feels thirsty. Moreover it is inadequate, for this method never enables him· to gather and store any considerable quan tity such as is required for a variety of purposes. Then there is a second possibil ity. The farmer can hollow out a section of a log, fashioning it into a bucket, and in it· he can carry a full day's supply of water to his house all at once. The ad vantage is obvious, but to gain it he must go a considerable distance on a round about course. It takes a whole day's carv ing to hollow out the pail; to do the carv ing it is necessary first to fell a tree; to do the felling he must first procure or make himself an axe, and so forth. Fi nally, there is a third possibility for our 134 THE FREEMAN March farmer. Instead of felling one tree, he fells a number of them, hollows out the trunks of all of them, constructs a pipe line from them, and through it conducts an abundant stream of spring water right to his house. Clearly, the roundabout road from expenditure of labor to attain ment of water has become considerably longer, but to make up for it, the road has led to a far more successful result.

Now our farmer is entirely relieved of the task of plying his weary way from house to spring burdened with the heavy bucket, and yet he has at all times a co pious supply of absolutely fresh water right in the house.2 Bohm-Bawerk went on to give other examples, such as, tearing pieces from a granite cliff by hand versus setting a dynamite charge with tools and blowing them off, which satisfied him that the superi ority of the roundabout method of production was universal. Or, as he put it, cCThe lesson to be drawn from all these examples is quite clear. It is to the effect that roundabout methods are more fruitful than di rect methods in the production of consumers' goods. . . . In addition, the superiority appears in the fact that some consumers' goods cannot be produced except by indirect methods."3 He doubted that eco nomic theory could prove that this was the case; it was, instead, a les son drawn from practical experi ence.

While he does not point this out, it is clear to me that the roundabout method is the method of nature it self. The river follows a winding path to the sea, following the course of least resistance as it moves to an ever lower level. Even more circu itous is the manner in which the lands are watered from great bodies of water. Particles of water are cap tured and carried upward by the air as the air is heated by the sun. The winds carry this water to distant points where it coalesces into clouds under the right conditions and is re leased upon the earth as it strikes cooler air. Man Cooperateswith Nature Bohm-Bawerk does note, how ever, that man in adopting round about methods does so in coopera tion with nature to secure the desired results. As he says, cCWe are as in capable of overcoming the cohesive ness of the granite cliff from which we wish to derive building material, as we are of combining carbon and nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen, phosphorous and potassium and the like, to form a single grain of wheat.

But what is denied our own powers is quite feasible for other forces, namely, the forces of nature herself. There are natural forces which can perform prodigies of strength infi nitely beyond human capacity, and there are other natural forces which, in the world of minutiae, are capa ble of contacts of incredible deli cacy....

1981 WHAT'S THIS ABOUT SOLAR ENERGY? 135 HWe do not have the ability to gather atoms of .phosphorus and po tassium from the ground, of carbon and oxygen from the atmosphere and combine them to form a. grain of wheat. But the principles of organic: chemistry can be put in play by the' forces within the seed-kernel of wheat to initiate the magical pro cess of growth, while for us it is ri-, diculously easy to place the seed in the bosom of the earth, the one place' where it can carry out its mysteri ous function."4 Just so, and with that we come' very near to our point. Any direct effort to capture and store solar en ergy can be likened to getting water from a spring by cupping our hands. Even early indirect methods are' likely to be about as primitive as, cutting down a tree and fashioning' a bucket with which to fetch the wa ter to the house. In any case, if the storing of solar energy is a problem.

at all, it is one which nature has, long been busily solving in myriad. and wondrous ways. The most direct way in which na ture stores solar energy is in plants. Nonetheless, it is done in a round about way. The process is called photosynthesis. It occurs in the leaves of plants to which minerals and water are brought from the roots, and these make food in the presence of sunlight. The food, or energy, is then stored in the fruit, the body, and root of the plant. Animals obtain their food, or energy, from plants, or from eating other ani mals, if they are carnivorous, who have obtained it from plants. Hence, it is literally true to say that I run on solar energy. The full round aboutness of the process by which food is made in plants would involve the story of how the water got there, how minerals are deposited in the soil, and so on. Stored Energy Vast quantities of solar energy have been stored in the bowels of the earth as a result of natural pro cesses.They are commonly referred to as fossil fuels today, and consist mainly of coal, oil, and natural gas.

Coal is believed to have been formed chiefly, or entirely, from plant mat ter, which was interrupted either in its life or deterioration and fossil ized in seams of the earth. Oil is be lieved to have been formed largely from extracts of sea animals (and possibly plants) which occurred when the waters covering certain areas receded. Natural gases are presum ably relics of decayed animal matter trapped in the pores of the earth. Another vast source of energy is nuclear energy. This energy is re leased by a process of fission in the nucleus of atoms when they are bombarded by neutrons. In the sense in. which we have been using solar energy,Le., as energy derived from the heat or radiation of the sun, I 136 THE FREEMAN March have no information that points to the necessary conclusion that nu clear energy is solar energy. In an other sense, however, it can be said that nuclear energy is solar energy.

That way of stating it, however, may be going at an explanation wrong end-to, so let us put it directly. Solar energy is nuclear energy. The heat and radiation from the sun is attrib uted to continuous and intense nu clear activity. Thus, the induced in stability in the nucleus of the atom on the earth is an artificially de vised method of releasing sun-like energy. In nature, and so far as we know, virtually all nuclear energy released is solar energy, or, to speak more universally, since there are numerous suns, or stars, in the heavens, star energy. Therefore, in a very important sense, nuclear en ergy is also solar energy. What I am getting at, then, is that we have no practical choice as to whether or not we will use solar en ergy. Our choices are concerned only with which forms of solar energy we will use. Our choices have to do with such questions as whether we will use the direct heat and radiation from the sun, the energy that is stored in plants, the energy stored in fossil fuels, the energy that can be made available by impounding waters and releasing them so as to produce electricity, the energy made available by the movement of winds, and so on. In any case, we will be making choices as to which form, or combinations of forms, of solar en ergy we will use.

Nor do we have any real choice as to whether or not we will employ roundabout methods in storing and releasing solar energy. The only di rect· solar energy we can exploit is such heat and radiation as we can absorb by exposing our bodies to the sun. Beyond that all methods of storing solar energy are in greater or lesser degree roundabout meth ods. To collect rocks and place them so as to store heat during the day for use in the night is a roundabout method. To lay down pipes in which water will be heated for use is a roundabout method. To build a shel ter which will store a portion of the heat for warmth during the night is a roundabout method. The Need to Choose In short, since we cannot eat sun beams, and since the heat and ra diation from the sun does not arrive continuously in the quantities, of the quality, and in the concentra tion which is satisfactory to our pur pose, we must go about storing it and releasing it in roundabout ways.

It is in order to reiterate, too, that in whatever form we avail ourselves of stored solar energy we will have to use things that are scarce. There fore, our decisions will be, and are, economic decisions. Nor are there any methods available to us that do 1981 WHAT'S THIS ABOU'r SOLAR ENERGY? 137 not involve dangers; even the direct rays of the sun may cause skin can cer, and concentrated sunlight can cause all sorts of damage. In the fi nal analysis, all energy is released by burning, oxidation, or friction; and heat, radiation, and fire are dangerous. Our choices, then, are from among roundabout ways, in volve costs, and greater or lesser dangers. A part of the appeal, at least to me, of Bohm-Bawerk's phrase, ttroundabout method of production," is that it brings us up short and makes us think. After all, we do not ordinarily think of the roundabout way as being the best and most effi cient way of doing anything. After all, we are brought up on the axiom that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. That being the case, we are predisposed to the most direct way of going about a thing. On reflection, however, we may come to realize that while the axiom is valid for distance it is in applicable to production. In produc tion, the predisposition to the most direct way becomes a prejudice against the use of capital. (It is also, I suspect, a prejudice against civili zation, for anyone who is aware of the forms of civilization must know also that they are often indirect and roundabout.) It is not Bohm-Bawerk's point, as I understand it, that there is any thing superior, per se, in roundaboutness. (Its superiority, where it occurs, is something learned from experience, he makes clear, not from theory.) Thus, we do not go about production in the most· roundabout way conceivable, nor add on ever more layers of the roundabout for the sake of roundaboutness. On the contrary, we go about production in the most direct way possible to achieve what is wanted most effi ciently. It is the case, however, that the use of tools (capital) is a round about way to get the job done, and it is the most efficient way, and some times the only way. It happens, too, that we can greatly increase the supply of goods produced by a given amount of labor by the judicious use of capital.

Political Intervention If roundaboutness, per se, were wanted, we would be in excellent shape today, for there should be no doubt that government interven tion, restrictions, controls, and ma nipulation have made much of pro duction exceedingly roundabout. Unfortunately, politically moti vated roundaboutness does not con tribute to·an increase in production; it is, instead, counterproductive. In deed, the high cost of energy today which set the stage for the move ment to find ways to utilize direct solar energy more effectively can be attributed directly to politically mo tivated roundaboutness. This is so 138 THE FREEMAN whether we consider the cartel formed by the governments of the OPEC nations to restrict production and charge all that the traffic will bear for oil or our own numerous re strictions which weigh heavily on production. Economically motivated roundaboutness increases produc tion, for it brings capital.to bear on supplying our wants in the most ef fective manner. Politically moti vated roundaboutness decreases production, for it limits and re strains effective uses of capital.

Bohm-Bawerk knew nothing ofour energy shortage, of course. He did know, however, that man is con fronted with scarcity of all those things denominated goods, includ ing energy. His ingenious phrase, ((roundabout method of production," was devised to define and expand our conception of capital, to under stand more fully the role that it plays, and how it plays it. He be lieved that the most effective way to get more goods in the actual world in which we live is to go about get ting them in the roundabout way entailed in the use of capital. In stead of getting our water by cup ping our hands, getting our wood by pushing trees down, trying to dis lodge pieces of granite by pulling at it with our bare hands, or obtaining energy by trying to imprison sun beams, he saw the great advantages in imitating nature and going about these things in a roundabout way. To return to direct methods would be retrogressive; progress was made by indirect methods which are en tailed in the use of capital. i -FOOTNOTESISee The Flight from Reality (Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, 1969), chapter 18.

2Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk, Capital and In terest, vol. II (South Holland, Ill.: Libertarian Press, 1959), pp. 10-11. 3Ibid., p. 12. 4Ibid., p. 13. IDEAS ON LIBERTY What Makes Wages Rise WHAT is called the American way of life is the result of the fact that the United States has put fewer obstacles in the way of saving and capital accumulation than other nations .... There is only one way that leads to an improvement of the standard of living for the wage-earning masses-the increase in the amount of capital invested. All other methods, however popular they may be, are not only futile, but are actually detrimental to the well-being of those they allegedly' want to benefit. LUDWIG VON MISES, "Wages, Unemployment, and Inflation"