Comunidad del pacífico en perspectiva - Volumen 2

OCEAN RESOURCES AND OCEAN TECHNOLOGIF.'! IN THE P ACIFIC ced stable platfonn designs also deserve mention here (Yumori, 1975) . In the transport of bulk goods in tankers, by containerships, or in barges, there is no competition to ocean transport in terms of energy costs per ton.mile. Rail transport, in gross tenns, is several times more expensive while road and air transport, respectively, are one and two orders of magnitude more costly. These compa– risons underline technology and design-related energy advantages in the sea transport of goods and people where speed is not of the essence, and with them, some attractive attributes of oceanic environments. AIso, design and sea trials of combinations of wind cum diesel.powered freighters of various sizes promise to lower even further the transport costs of certain goods (Ocean Industry, 1979). More costly though air transportation may be, aH those who participated in the Easter Island conference recognize its advan– tages and its role in communications in the Pacifico They are such that one can predict, considering the many airstrips and the many conveniences of flying, that this mode of transportation will com– mand that liquid fossil fuels continue to be allocated to it with high priority. Airplanes pennit meetings but satellites permit dialogues over great distances as clearly borne out by the international telephone installation on Easter Island. In association with telecommunication devíces such as typewriter consoles, satcllite-mediated dialogues can be had over the entire globe that are independent of time zones. The East-West Center, for instance, situated in the mid-Pacific, has held a successful tele.conference on resources with the InternationaI Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (lIASA) in Vienna with a time difference of eleven hours prevailing between the two si tes. But back to the ocean and to further amenities it provides: waste management and waste disposal seem to have posed in– creasingly difficult problems for modern society. Contrary to po– pular belief, the ocean is an excellent environment in which the wastes of men can be blended. Extensive and exhaustive studies by the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project (Bascom, 1979) have found that oceanic disposal of sewage, even after mini– mal treatment but taking into account prevailing ocean currents, 137