Where do we find power?

A reminder of the industrial world's utter dependence on energy is what happens when it becomes scarce. The consequences aren't only a shortage of energy, but derivative afflictions. Here is the lead from Friday's Slate's "International Papers," by June Thomas:

" Y2K in the U.K. The predictions of the Y2K soothsayers have come true in Britain as the nation's infrastructure collapses: Supermarkets are rationing bread and milk! Hospitals are running short of drugs! Banks have only a few days' supply of cash on hand! Mail deliveries are threatened! Factory production lines could be halted, schools closed, and buses and trains grounded! Even the billion-dollar Millennium Dome seems to be snared by the curse, as the government contemplates its demolition only a year after it opened. The cause of the crisis, however, is not the millennium bug. The country is short on petrol."

Now gasoline in Great Britain sells for about $5.50 per gallon and 75 percent (approximately $4) goes to the government in tax. A reduction in tax is the quickest way to alleviate public pressure, and France has done exactly that, reducing its tax by 15 percent.

This exercise is excruciatingly painful. Look at it this way: If Great Britain lowers the tax on gasoline by, say, 25 percent, that lowers state revenue over the next quarter by the relevant figure. Say, to use round figures, 200 million pounds.

That money, which has been going for general expenses, most notably (to quote British analysts) for the kind of environmental protection and maintenance that are required by the existence of automobile traffic, is now going somewhere else. Where, exactly? Well, it is a form of foreign aid to Saudi Arabia, Russia, Kuwait, Nigeria and Venezuela. To say that isn't an exercise in economic reductionism. That is exactly where the money goes, and it leaves those countries that heretofore had the use of the money needing to find alternative means of raising it.