When we adjourned for Question Time I was emphasising the physical conservation of energy and pointing out that economists and statesmen and the man in the street had not realised the importance of this factor. It was tacitly assumed that energy supplies were physically limitless and that considerations which arose were monetary and economic—in other words, a question of cost. We now know that the position is otherwise.
Deputy Staunton and I were pursuing a line of thought. Energy considerations and the supply of oil were, to some extent, motivating the element we introduced into this debate. One must realise that the oil supplies of the world are limited. Even if there were a completely free flow of Middle East oil to the communities of the world, a problem would still have to be faced. Technology is developing and, where it has developed, it has raised the living standards and the true wealth of communities. It would be the hope that that technology and development could be extended to all people to raise standards of living, and to dominate the solution of the problems facing humanity living on this planet.
All that depends on limited resources of energy. If, for instance, the Third World were to be as developed as the most advanced parts of the world are today, the demand on energy resources and the expenditure of energy reserves would increase. Therefore, urgent and all as it is in the short term, even if oil supplies, and easy and economically available oil supplies, to use the old fashioned terms, from the Middle East were as freely and cheaply available as they were, an end would come to the gallop perhaps sooner than we think. That leaves Europe and every country in the world, the big powers no less— the law of the conservation of energy is a great levelling factor—with the urgent problem of where the supplies of the future are to be secured.
I can understand the reactions of those with oil supplies to simply getting paper or token remuneration, or something like that, for the real wealth which they were supplying to the rest of the world. I will have to postpone developing that point until I come to the question of monetary policy, which I hope to come to later in connection with Europe.
On the question of the physical supply of energy, the present situation has brought home to everybody that every other available source of energy production and energy harnessing all over the world must be urgently explored and exploited. The answer to the energy problem of Europe, or anywhere else, is not simply the solution of problems arising in regard to Middle East oil supplies. It is much wider. It is not even a question of the partition of certain energy reserves between two super powers, or between east and west. It goes far beyond that. Therefore there must be a development of other available resources and, if possible, the harnessing of new power.
Before going directly to the point I want to make, and to show where I am going, I should like to make this remark in parenthesis. This is such a big and global problem that it cannot be treated on a local basis and in particular, it cannot be treated on a local basis by a small country such as this. Here we hit an area where the importance of our association with other states, the importance of our membership of the European Community, becomes emphasised. In that context, and with that parenthetical statement in mind, I want to go a little further into the question of energy supply.
In the era of easy supply when costs were the principal factors, wherever oil was easily found, such as in the Middle East or in parts of America, or part of Russia, there was no problem. The oil was got out of the ground as cheaply and physically easily as possible, and distributed. It was bought as cheaply as possible and applied for manufacturing purposes, or similar purposes, without question as to anything else but cost, and without regard to the fact that there is such a thing as the law of the conservation of energy. We must think more deeply now. Obviously the first thing must be exploration and exploitation of such energy reserves as are available.
Now I come strictly to the European context. I come to the Continent of Europe and its environment. As we know on the coast, in the sea, and perhaps elsewhere, there are some reserves of oil and gas which heretofore it would not have been economic to exploit, and which may have been considered even irrelevant, on the tacit assumption that the supplies coming from elsewhere could continue indefinitely. In the light of our present knowledge the importance of tapping these resources is self-evident. In fact, under the compulsion of necessity this process is well under way. We read every day about oil discoveries, oil contracts, Government interests and so on, but the relevant point for the purpose of this debate is that the physical capacity —largely a question of size of population and development—the technical capacity—largely a matter of the technological resources of the community concerned—and the financial capacity —measured in terms of the conventional financial and economic resources of the community concerned—that are required for this development are so great that they are far beyond what a community of, say, our size can undertake on its own. It brings one immediately into a broader context and, looking at it in the long term I can see that the best and most efficient and beneficial way of dealing with the newlydiscovered and the less easily exploited energy resources in oil, coal and gas particularly, will be on a European basis.
I am not suggesting that national interests are not to be considered: having regard to the size of the problem a European base and a common base for approaching this problem of energy seems to be the logical and sound long-term way of looking at it and constitute a justification one did not argue for those who advocated entering the common market on the one hand and a justification for our being in it and adhering to it in the present and for the future, on the other.
So far, I have spoken of energy reserves which are really stores of energy in the earth, whether oil, coal or gas. Another kind of energy is possibly physically available but in terms of old economics it is outside the Pale on questions of cost, technical complexity and difficulty. That is the energy that can be got by harnessing certain large natural forces such as the wind or the tide. There are large amounts of terrestrial energy available but, again, it seems that the human, technological and financial resources needed to harness these forms of energy are so great as to force even the larger continental nations to coalesce into co-operative effort.
I see our energy problems in many ways closely connected with our membership of the Communities of European peoples. For an individual to attempt any answers here would be worse than futile and I shall not do so but the general point is valid and should be made and should help to clarify our thinking regarding such matters and help to bring the problem into such focus that many of the wild and impractical things that are being said about energy, oil and other things will be eliminated and will help to furnish an answer to the absurd when the absurd is stated.
Complementary to that is another thought on energy. I have not mentioned nuclear energy, a large potential source of energy which I think will have to be exploited. The problem there is largely technological now since the cost element has been completely changed, as I indicated earlier. It is something to be pursued and is being pursued all over the world but, again, for a worthwhile pursuit of that objective one must have sufficient resources under the three headings I mentioned earlier and no small community such as ours has such resources. Therefore, the answer is the same: we must look to a larger association and in our case to the European Community and we must co-operate in that towards the desired end because, in simple physical terms, energy is life.
There is, fortunately, a factor which may help to make available to areas such as ours the energy which is harnessed elsewhere. It is most likely that when it comes to utilisation of the energy produced the tendency will be to use it primarily for the generation of electricity and to transmit the energy to consumers in that form. That is a broad statement and is not meant to go without the necessary qualification in particular cases where necessary. Broadly speaking, energy is likely to be most efficiently harnessed, I think, and prepared for distribution in the form of electricity. Fortunately, that form of power is more easily transmitted over a distance.
As a simple example let us take a railway. In the old days when coal was used to generate power for the trains, the only thing to do was to put coal in all the engines so that each would function individually. If the problem of using coal for this purpose had to be faced, say, 150 years later, it is conceivable that someone would have said: "We will electrify the railways instead of putting coal into the engines because it would be much more efficient to put coal into a central power station and transmit the power to electric trains." I trust that explains the point I am trying to make —that the tendency would be to distribute electricity. This is a developing science which, apart from efficiency considerations, has great advantages in transmissability.
We have been sharing power from local stations with our neighbours across the Border but we must foresee a time when a power network distribution system will be on a much broader basis than the present national boundaries and that situation would require co-ordination. Therefore, to the first argument which was directed to the realities of energy production must be added the second argument relating to the distribution of energy produced. Those arguments lead me cogently to a long-term commitment to some association. That association is there and this is a very strong reason for our membership of the EEC, for developing it and for playing our part as far as possible in co-operating in it.
If, in the future, there should come about a situation in which wind or tide would be harnessed, it is possible that at least one site would be found here. However, I have made these remarks as a result of Deputy Staunton's interesting contribution but they are out of the sequence in which I intended speaking. To those who take a narrow view of current economics and of the difficulties or the advantages of a current situation, whether they be industrialists, farmers or those considering the situation from the point of view of taxation or any others, I would emphasise the importance of the physical role of energy. I am speaking purely in organic physical terms when I say that energy is life and that without energy there is physical death. The world has a real problem in respect of its energy resources. It is not realised commonly that there is an upper limit to the availability of energy on this planet because our energy comes mainly from the sun, but if the rate of consumption were to exceed the annual rate of income from outside this planet we would be thrown completely on reserves and, consequently, the duration of life would be limited by the length of time the inadequate supply plus the reserves would last. That is a simple equation. It is not common in a parliament to hear emphasised the physical law of the conservation of energy but I am invoking this law which is known to physicists and chemists as the first law of thermodynamics as a reason for appreciating the importance of our membership of the EEC. Here is set up the mechanism to put us on our way for the future.
When the question of our accession to the EEC was mooted those of us who strongly supported membership were influenced largely by such considerations as that. At last here was an opportunity, after almost 200 years, to break out again from the encirclement of the British economy and I do not mean in any way to be disparaging of that economy but we were going into the broader context of Europe which, culturally and otherwise, this country had belonged to formerly. Here was the logical and intelligent way for a country such as ours which, only comparatively lately, had been able to realise what are known commonly as national aspirations. To go into the future, preserving the integrity of this State, and bringing it into modern conditions and for all time.
It seemed to those of us who advocated membership that the road to the Community was the road to take. There were economic arguments from some people against joining but these may have been over-stressed. Some of us—I hope I am among them—were more moderate in our views. We must realise when we are discussing a subject like this or our own financial business that there will always be problems and criticisms, there will be different opinions about how something should be done, there will always be mistakes and there will be unforeseen contingencies. However it is a mistake to let these possibilities dominate one's thinking. There will also be opportunities and unexpected favourable circumstances, perhaps alternating with the others.
I am sorry I was not here for the Parliamentary Secretary's speech but I was at a committee. It has been pointed out by some speakers that there have been financial benefits as a result of our membership and that there has been a considerable contribution to the liquidity of the State as a result of our association with Europe. We should be on our guard against letting the short-term difficulties demoralise us in our determination to pursue the line we were authorised to pursue by the vast majority of the people—which I still believe is the right line to pursue— and we should not be inhibited by the difficulties and disappointments of the moment. For that reason I will not go into detail on this occasion about the regional fund or about agricultural problems. We must do the best we can and we must be clear about our course in the foreseeable future.
I have no doubt about our course with regard to the European Community. I am convinced that membership of the Community is essential for our survival as a State, quite apart from the benefits we may obtain. People who talk in terms of isolation at this late stage of history are getting away from reality. I am only expressing a feeling and will not try to justify it by argument or logic but for some reason when people talk in a certain way the word "Newfoundland" and the problems of integration in Nova Scotia and other places in that area come into my mind, although I realise their problems are different from ours. We want to be ourselves, with the dignity of statehood and nationhood, and the maintenance of that status depends on our free association in the EEC. We should not have any ambiguity on that point.
The next element is free trade. I am emphasising where we stand on this because, when one makes a comment for reform or action or when one offers a legitimate criticism, it is too easy to have it turned back on one on a point where there should be common agreement. If the EEC is to develop for the mutual advantage of participants and associates, it is clear that free trade is essential. If that is denied the association is partitioned off. If energy is life, trade in its broadest terms is the functioning of life. I admit there is a transitional problem with regard to free trade and that there will be problems of adjustment, as there were in the Treaty of Accession. When I advocate free trade I do so as a principle not as an automatic, universally applicable rule. It is important to do this because a protectionist approach has a great deal of attraction in the short-term and in certain areas it may be necessary at a given time but, in the long-term, for the development of human activity on a global scale free trade is essential. That may seem a rather strange thing for one of the older Deputies on this side of the House to say. I would say to the Parliamentary Secretary, not as an excuse but as a very important factor, that we must go with the times and I would say to him tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.
