Why is California now suffering from a lack of affordable electricity? The answer is that California and the nation have not looked responsibly to the future.

In the late 1960s and early '70s, the United States was doubling its electricity use every 10 years. To meet coming needs, utilities were placing major orders for new generating plants. In 1973 the situation changed. The Arab oil boycott and the resulting higher energy costs slowed the growth of electricity use to a doubling in 35 years. As a result, the new plants ordered before 1973 that were subsequently built led to a surplus of electrical supply.

That nationwide surplus, which is now gone, is what California officials were counting on when deregulation was approved in 1996 - a robust, competitive market of wholesale electrical supply from generating companies outside the state. That expectation failed. Why?

Before 1973, the Sierra Club supported nuclear power. Since then, the influential "environmental" organizations have opposed oil, gas, coal and nuclear plants, as well as dams, and even geothermal plants. They argue for solar and wind power which, on a large scale, are impractical because of their immense land use and their intermittent availability.

In this country we must decide how to meet our energy needs. The Energy Information Administration projects a continued U.S. increase of electricity needs of 40% in the next 20 years, and the needed replacement of 25% of our current capacity. There are problems that must be addressed. The price of natural gas has quadrupled in the past year. New gas-fueled electricity plants, which were the least expensive source of electricity, are now the most expensive. Natural gas supply will remain tight for the foreseeable future, with accompanying price volatility depending on weather and import availability from Canada and Mexico. Oil is subject to serious overseas political problems and costs that have gone up and down. Coal, which is among the most plentiful and least costly energy sources, has environmental problems: large emissions of CO2 and other pollutants, including small particles.

The electricity trap in which California now finds itself is a consequence of the national trends coming together this winter. Weather has increased demand in the western U.S., so California cannot depend on low-cost electricity purchases from neighboring states. The political response has so far been Band-Aid fixes, which do not tackle the root issue of making California a friendly state for long-term investment by electricity generators.

The recent electricity problems in California make it clear that we must take action to prevent future energy disasters. In the next few years our only means to provide the needed electricity is with an expansion of gas- and/or coal-powered plants, with their financial and environmental problems. We should demonstrate now that nuclear plants can be built here as efficiently as they can be built abroad and move to get our waste repositories moving. We need government commitment and action to ensure that we can meet our near-term and long-term energy needs in California and nationally.

Chauncey Starr served as dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science from 1967 to 1972 and is founding president of the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto. Bertram Wolfe is a former vice president of General Electric.