Comunidad del pacífico en perspectiva - Volumen 2

LA COMUNIDAD DEL PAciFICO EN PERSPECTIVA I F. Orrego Vicuña (4) Lastly, one should observe the less ocean - but more tro– pies - oriented tenet that, in the past, tropical man had successful competitors, to put it mildly, in the form oí tropical diseases and parasites. He also did not know presently available practical means to control his populations. Tropical diseases and overpopulation are, at least in theory, controllable. The first proposition, namely, that it is cheaper in terms of energy to live in the tropics or subtropics than in the temperate zones, hardly needs elaboration. Both authors can testify to. the fact that they have no heating bilIs and the clothing bills of their families are a fraction of what they were in Ann Arbor, Michigan or New York, respectively, where they resided before they moved to Hawaii. As this proposition includes the term "reasonably affluent living", one ought to mention that there are, especially for tropical islands, as yet not adequately realized possibilities of building with nature instead of against her. Provided architects use their skills to take advantage of winds and through them of evaporative cooling (and in the not-too-distant future also of solar devices for cooling), tropIcal and subtropical living and working spaces can become far more independent of fossil (uels than they now are. Reasonably affluent living also includes transportation, the present bane of energy planners, since the most palpable scarcity in sources of energy is that of portable fuels. Open air, light frame cars have already made their appearance and will spread. And motorcycles and bicyeles make for more pleasant land transportation in the subtropics and tropics than in regions where there i5 snow and sleet. Oceanic and coastal communities can also benefit from inno– vations in sea transportation. True, high speed marine craft are energy intensive, but energy costs of ship operations are adjustable because of the trade-off between speed and power. A reduction in speed of 50% entails savings in installed power requirement and fuel consumption so as to make any given voyage at that speed cost only a quarter of what it would have cost to travel at the higher speed. New ship concepts such as semi-submersible hulls can provide low energy, high volume, sea-kindly transportation for people and vehicIes in and around island 01' coastaI waters; advan- 136