THE CONSERVER SOCIETY: Or the Reform of Sammy Squander

By either name, a misguided attempt to treat a serious subject, conservation, with a sophomoric storyline. By some curious bifurcation a chapter such as ""The Physical Limits to Throughput,"" is alternated with one entitled ""Sammy Squander Hears from His Old Friend Angus McThrift."" Apparently realizing that their book offers little new information on energy conservation, the authors vainly attempt to inflate the importance of what they're saying through the use of code words. For example, ""ZANG is an objective of CS2, not a strategy."" Translation: Zero artificial needs growth is an objective of an affluent, stable society. When the authors are not bombarding the reader with inane abbreviations (others are NANG, NIG, NUG) they are making solemn pronouncements such as ""The basic idea behind the conserver society is the notion of conservation"" and ""we cannot economize everything simultaneously, we must devise selection rules to choose what we wish to conserve."" The intriguing energy-saving concepts they do introduce--sharing-by-renting, abolition of all persuasive advertising--are not explored capably, since at book's end their feasibility still seems minimal. In fact, everything about this book seems minimal.