http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environ/20010511/t000039764.html
Friday, May 11, 2001 | Print this story
Nonprofit Shrugs at Pleas to Conserve
Power: Ayn Rand Institute blasts calls to use less electricity.
Utility and government officials defend conservation.
By BOB POOL, Times Staff Writer
Their other electricity customers may be following the Southern
California Edison Co.'s plea to conserve electricity during the
current energy crisis.
But don't expect anyone to be going room-to-room flipping off
lights and turning down air conditioning in a fourth-floor suite at
one Marina del Rey office building.
That kind of conservation is "immoral" and "un-American," say
those working at the Ayn Rand Institute international headquarters on
Admiralty Way.
The 15-year-old nonprofit group is run by devotees of novelist
and philosopher Ayn Rand, who died in 1982. It is a clearinghouse and
educational center for those who embrace Rand's theories of
individualism and laissez-faire capitalism.
Her philosophy, Rand wrote, "is the concept of man as a heroic
being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with
productive achievement as his noblest activity."
Rand--whose first name rhymes with mine--is best known for the
novels "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged," which together have
sold 20 million copies.
Institute leaders are blasting calls for electricity
conservation and the executive order issued last week by President
Bush that directs operators of federal buildings in California to
reduce energy consumption.
"Expecting the American people to lower their standard of living
is an immoral idea," said Yaron Brook, the institute's executive
director.
"Conservation is not a long- or short-term solution to the
energy crisis. Conservation is the un-American idea of resigning
oneself to doing with less--like a sick person who stops seeking a
cure and resigns himself to living with his illness." Instead, he
said, market forces should prevail to increase power supplies and
reduce demand.
On Thursday, Brook's statements surprised officials pleading
with Californians to turn off lights and reduce air conditioning to
help prevent rolling blackouts.
" 'Un-American?' I've never heard that before," said Tom Boyd,
an Edison spokesman. "We and other utilities are urging our customers
to conserve electricity and use it wisely."
Lori O'Donley, a spokeswoman for the California Independent
System Operator, the agency that monitors power consumption and
orders rolling blackouts when supplies run low, said that "there are
times we feel conservation has made a difference" in calling or not
calling for blackouts.
A White House spokeswoman said President Bush stands by his call
for conservation.
"The president believes the federal government should do its
part. He takes the energy crisis in California very seriously and
believes it is right and appropriate to explore how we can conserve
energy," Claire Buchan said.
Brook disagrees.
The 40-year-old former Santa Clara University finance professor
has headed the institute since last August. It has 16 staffers and
operates on a $3-million annual budget financed by about 4,000
contributors--all firm believers in Ayn Rand's philosophy.
Brook said he was a teenager living in Israel when he read
"Atlas Shrugged" and was immediately converted from the concept of
socialism to capitalism.
By coincidence, that novel features a countrywide blackout that
is the result of massive government economic regulation. Rand writes
on page 1,075 of towns "reduced to the life of those ages in which
artificial light was an exorbitant luxury and a sunset put an end to
human activity."
The towns were ruined by "rations, quotas, controls and
power-conservation rules."
Brook said the institute's Marina del Rey headquarters has thus
far been spared blackouts. But at his Tustin home, he and his wife
and two children turn off lights when they aren't needed.
"I do it because I don't want to pay higher electricity bills,"
he said with a laugh. "I don't want to pay for something I don't use."
Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times
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