CHLOROPHYLL AND ENERGY 219 



from the neighbouring heath! An inventory of the soil and 

 its possibihties in most countries would reveal more wealth 

 than we might suppose. 



Beside this abandoned land, there is other land which 

 could easily be gained for agriculture, like that to be irrigated 

 by the great dams being constructed in Algeria and many 

 other parts of the world and the fields of rice or grain which 

 since the war have encrouched on the desert of the Crau. The 

 Dutch farmers, in their successful struggle against the sea, 

 have provided the most striking example of these extensions 

 of cultivation, a priori discouraged by all the economists, by 

 constructing and maintaining enormous dikes, pumping out 

 the water and removing the salt from the land. And this 

 enterprise has proved profitable in spite of real dangers. 



Such considerations seem so completely alien to the neo- 

 Malthusians that it is permissible to wonder whether, instead 

 of examining the facts impartially, they do not merely select 

 from them examples to support a theory the vaUdity of which 

 they never question. 



The Future of Energy Obtained Through Chlorophyll 



As soon as a product becomes scarce on the market, its 

 price rises in proportion as the demand exceeds the supply. 

 If, on the other hand, the supply is greater than the demand, 

 the price soon falls — we have heard of coffee in Brazil being 

 used for fuel, and of wheat in France before the war being 

 rendered unfit for human consumption so that it could be 

 used only as cattle food. The object in both cases was to 

 "produce a healthy market".^ 



Today, on a free market, prices are not far from their 

 normal level. Compare the prices of energy produced through 

 chlorophyll with those of electrical energy, converting all the 

 energy theoretically into kilowatt-hours. ^ 1 kWh. of electricity 



iln certain districts of France, at the end of the last war, a pound of 

 hay cost up to three times more than a pound of bread as the price of 

 bread, kept artificially low, did not represent its real value. 



2A kilowatt-hour corresponds to 860,000 calories. 



