Nation: Edge of Darkness

For much of the week the Northeastern seaboard flickered close to a massive power failure. The halls of office buildings, their lights dimmed to conserve electricity, were restfully muted, without their usual operating-room fluorescence. That was the best to be said for it. As power companies imposed “dimouts”—cutting their output of voltage as much as 8%—air conditioners labored and sometimes failed.

The odd thing was that a mere change in the weather—an unexpected late-September hot spell—could bring one of the world’s largest electric systems so close to total blowout. Public utility companies, which have encouraged customers to buy more appliances to consume more power, now plead that they must build more power plants to meet the increased need. Conservationists stress that more power plants will increasingly foul the already poisonous air. Partly because of the bad city air, architects design buildings with windows permanently closed. Thus massive air-conditioning systems must dangerously draw ever heavier loads of power—without, however, filtering out most of the pollutants. Unless the course along such a double helix of progressively contradictory demands is reversed, high-energy civilizations could find themselves literally in a dark age.