The Power of Conservatiion.

• Position: Brief Article - Editorial

In May, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney released his new energy plan, which, like a fad diet, assures the United States -- the world's largest consumer of energy that it can gorge its way into energy security. The plan calls for speeding up licensing of nuclear and coal power plants, giving huge tax breaks to nuclear plants and "clean coal" technologies, easing restrictions on oil drilling on public lands, and relaxing regulations on power plants, including clean air laws.

In anticipation of the release of the plan, which gives short shrift to measures to improve energy efficiency, Cheney told reporters that "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis -- all by itself -- for a sound, comprehensive energy policy." Indeed, the new U.S. energy strategy promises to cure the country's energy "crisis" by flooding the country with up to 1,900 new power plants -- one every week for the next 20 years. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the flaws in the Cheney plan -- it takes only some elementary arithmetic.

Despite our technological savvy, we don't use energy very efficiently. For example, an automobile engine converts only about 10 percent of the energy it burns into mechanical energy to propel the vehicle forward. The other 90 percent is lost as heat. An incandescent light bulb turns only 5 percent of the energy it consumes into light.

Of course, we get diminishing returns on energy use: the second law of thermodynamics describes how energy moves from a high level of usefulness (chemical energy in gasoline, batteries, or food, for instance) to a lower one (dissipated heat). But by squeezing as much out of energy as we can when we use it, we can reduce both...