Comunidad del pacífico en perspectiva - Volumen 2

LA COMUNIDAD DEL PAciFICO EN PERSPEC'IIVA I F. Orrego Vicuña is the environmentally-preferred method of waste management. The energy differential between this method and secondary, let alone tertiary, treatment is large. The differential cost in capital invest– ment alone for traditional alternatives to dilute ocean disposal of New York City sludge is not less than two billion dollars. Even as we mention other forms of waste disposal in the ocean, e. g., the return of mine tailings from future manganese nodule minings or the dumping of cal' bodies to make artificial reefs which provide shelter for fishes, we must also point to the need both of ascertaining degrees of alteration in the environment that follows these actions and whether 01" not sorne clearly economic trade-offs are socialIy desirable or acceptable. After having touched here on energy savings through ocean technologies, we now propose to return to energy proper and to i ts sources: relating to them, we make the conservative assumption lhat the fundamental energy source will continue to be fossil (oil, gas, and coal) , that the development of nuclear energy will be inhibited but not limited by the problems of proliferation and waste disposal, and that a transition to the many forms of solar energy wíll occur only when they are economically competitive. Finally, we also assume that very advanced energy resources, a mix of fusion and solar energy .utilization worldwide, will not occur in the 20 to 30 year time frame envisioned in this papero We do assume, though, that conventional fuel prices will rise in our time frame so as to foster a partial transition to nonconventional, i. e., renewable, energy sources, especially in those portions of the Pa– cific which are naturally well suited for such a transition. The presently known patterns of distrihution of fossil fueIs, coal as well as liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons, endow the Pacific and the Pacific rim with substantÍal advantages. Coal deposits exist in numerous Pacific rim countries and are being tapped increasingly. The many shallow ocean basins of Southeast Asia as well as the South China Sea, and even the shallow areas connecting sorne of the island ares, are now considered prime potential sources for submaríne oíl and gas (Siddayao, 1978). In fact, a recent conferen– ce at the East-West Center on fertilizer supplies in the Pacific in– dicated that there are abundant feedstocks of natural gas for 138