Nuclear Disaster in Soviet Union

The clamor arising from the Western world in the wake of the Soviet nuclear disaster misses the point.

There is no turning back from where we have brought ourselves with our insatiable need for power. How we get it--how it is produced--has become a moot point. The only hope we have is that we manage to survive with whatever means we have resorted to in producing it.

Burning fossil fuel fouls the air and kills our forests and lakes, dams and stream diversion alter our natural worlds beyond redemption, giant windmills insult our views of once pleasant hillsides. But we will never consider for one moment retreating from our world of so-called convenience, health and comfort.

A power outage has become more than momentary disruption. We are left in an intolerable limbo of confusion and helplessness, stranded in buildings, left in the cold, sweltering in unaccustomed heat--unable to prepare our food, entertain ourselves, put into play our memory and computing systems and our basic functions of business. Our world grinds to an ugly halt. We sit in a darkened world, fear stirring in our breasts.

Maybe the French, in their cold logic, know this and refuse to excite themselves as we have over this affair. Our dreamers will expound on how we have failed to harness the energy of that giant nuclear reactor in the sky we call the sun; protesters will march and go home and with never a thought, switch on some electronic marvel to watch themselves while the crock pot simmers on the electric range.

And while it all goes on we will continue in our servitude to the monsters we made in the foolish belief that we were bringing ourselves a new kind of freedom, leaving our warrens and spewing venom at the neighbor who crowds our progress on the freeways as we journey to places of work in crowded sealed dormitories, with the hope our masters keep the reassuring panels shining above us and the muted hum of comfort issuing through the vents, as we play out our daily chores on the brightly lit screens in front of us.

HENRY L. SCHARFF

Thousand Oaks