I read with interest David Humphrey's recent letter and Jack Twombly's considered reply on the issue of nuclear power and its role in our energy future.

If you missed these respective letters, Humphrey gave credence to a nuclear alternative while Twombly did not. This is a long, ongoing debate and is now a central issue on the world stage today as never before.

Wendell Berry (known as a poet, novelist, farmer, and passionate defender of the earth) has observed that the worst disease of the world today is the ideology of technological heroism, according to which more and more people willingly cause large-scale effects that they do not foresee and that they cannot control. Nuclear energy is indeed the prime example of this ideology of technological heroism, as we don't know how to dispose of its byproducts and most of us would agree that there is no way to promote nuclear power without also promoting nuclear weapons proliferation. In a world of increasing terrorism is this the course we want to pursue?

We have a choice of taking the hard path that entails serious environmental risks while building large centralized power stations and causing a wide range of effects that we cannot even begin to foresee or control, or we can take a softer path.

The softer path is not as extreme an approach as a giant nuclear power plant smoking out there in the Nevada desert, but it has infinitely more potential to address our energy needs and our greater community well-being. Taking the soft path demands that we all do more to live the changes we seek.

As the energy crisis deepens, costs of non-local goods and services are going to increase sharply and energy resources (especially fossil fuels) will become increasingly scarce and expensive. The only viable solution is that we learn to produce our essential needs as local communities. We must dramatically reduce our consumption of fossil fuels and our waste outputs, then we must join together to prepare our community to become as self-sufficient as possible in energy, food and economy.

For more information on how you can become involved in this effort contact the Boulder Valley Relocalization which is a group of citizens working together to prepare our community for greater self-sufficiency. Visit the BVR Web site at www.boulderrelocalization.org.