This is a column about science, not politics. I am not going to attack the energy policy of the current administration, any more (or any less) than I am going to criticize the policies of any previous president. As for the action or inaction of Congress on the subject, I will borrow a line from Shakespeare and say, "A plague on both your houses."

The "energy policy" of all these groups has a fatal flaw: there are no real goals. Yogi Berra gets credit for, "If you don't now where you're going, you're likely to end up somewhere else." And when it comes to energy, we don't know where we are going.

A national energy policy could set any one of a number of objectives. Here are a few, not mutually exclusive:

Within the next ten years, the United States will: 1) Become independent of imported oil. 2) Reduce total energy demand by 25 percent. 3) Double the use of renewable energy resources. 4) Double the investment in oil exploration and drilling. 5) Double the energy derived from natural gas. 6) Double the energy derived from coal. 7) Double the energy provided by nuclear power plants. 8) Add a $5 tax to every gallon of gasoline.

You can find people ready to stand up and cheer for any one of these. You are also guaranteed stiff opposition from interest groups representing all of the others. Even the apparently innocuous goal of energy conservation implies a reduction in business and jobs for oil companies, coal mines, refineries, power utilities and anyone else who relies on increased consumption. Regardless of what may be proposed, it seems unlikely that anything in the above list will become reality.

No one, perhaps fortunately, is asking me to define a national energy policy. On the other hand, I have definite views and maintain that some of the above "policies" are much preferable to others. What would you think of a proposal for managing the nation's forests, if it implied (but never stated) that there would be no forests at all a century from now? Worse than that, suppose that the proposal guaranteed that there would never again be forests to manage?

Let us look at some numbers.

If we follow the present trends in consumption and in the discovery of new reserves, the world has less than a century's supply of oil. Include the oil shales and oil tars that are presently not economically attractive and you can stretch that to maybe two centuries. Note that most of the reserves for these substances are outside the United States. That is less true for coal, where this country is unusually well supplied. We might take as long as 500 or 600 years to exhaust our reserves, although we would have to find much cleaner ways to burn the lower grades of coal or we would all choke. Natural gas reserves are more difficult to estimate. Maybe we can last for 90 to 120 years; if some methane is "primordial" and wells up constantly from the interior of the planet, the supply may last much longer. As long, perhaps, as four or five centuries.

We can debate the numbers, but one point is indisputable: once we have used these fuels they are gone forever. In less than a thousand years we will have consumed fossil hydrocarbons that took hundreds of millions of years to lay down. More than that, a sane society would preserve and treasure those hydrocarbons. Given the myriad other uses for coal, oil and gas, burning them should be added to the list of mortal sins.

The alternative uses of hydrocarbons represent a digression. Let us stick with the main question: What will we, and here I speak of the whole of humanity and not just the people of the United States, do when we run out of fossil fuels?

Well, there is nuclear, which today means plants employing nuclear reactors to generate their energy. That can hardly be described as the people's choice, though I personally would like to see much more of our electricity coming from nuclear power. There is also nuclear fusion, which may be the hope of the future but is today nowhere near a commercial breakeven.

What is left? We can adopt the attitude of Mr. Micawber in "David Copperfield" and assert that "something will turn up" to solve our energy problems. After all, something always has. There could be a new, efficient, and clean source of energy waiting for us, just a few years in the future; but it seems a little risky to put all our eggs in that particular basket of optimism. In any case, we ultimately will have no choice. Our methods of energy production must be either renewable, or effectively infinite.

That reduces our choices. The energy policy of the far future will be based on totally renewable resources, controlled nuclear fusion, or a combination of the two. Most renewable resources -solar, hydroelectric, wind, and the use of plant and animal products - ultimately depend on the sun, and its energy will be available for as long as humans are likely to be around. Tidal power, dependent on both moon and sun, is equally renewable and equally long lasting. Controlled fusion would be perfect, except for the unfortunate detail that we do not have it. It has been "just around the corner" for half a century, but seems as far away as ever. Jaundiced critics say, "Fusion is the energy source of the future - and always will be."

You may argue that I am being ridiculous, worrying about what may happen centuries from now. In the long run we are all dead, and future generations will have to solve their own problems.

Maybe. But meanwhile, Rome burns (one hopes in a non-polluting way), we fiddle on like Nero, and the electricity brownouts and blackouts roll across the West this year, next year, and the year after. I seem to have used quotations a lot in this column, so here is a final one: "The lamps are going out all over California. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." - Gray Davis.

All right, so I cheated a little. The original quotation said "Europe" not "California," and the speaker was not Gray Davis, Governor of California, but Edward Grey, Viscount of Fallodon, reacting to the outbreak of the First World War.

Viscount Grey was wrong. Let's hope that I am just as wrong about California and our energy future.

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