Change is inevitable. Sometimes the winds of change bring fresh air, sometimes polluted air. We welcome fresh air; we fight polluted air.

Some of us remember outhouses and we welcomed indoor plumbing, but that brought about river and stream pollution. Rather than going back to outhouses, we devised controls, such as sewer plants, and in rural areas, septic tanks.

In the area of fossil fuel emissions, emotions seem to have obliterated logic. Pollution control laws have brought about necessary changes, much like that of sewage control laws.

Virginia and California are the only two states that must buy electricity from other states at the present time. Therefore, when the crunch of limited supply comes, as it will, these two states will be the first to suffer.

The experts looking into alternate energy sources are coming up with dismal solutions. The land requirement for alternate electricity production is astounding. The amount of wood required to produce 1,000 megawatts of electricity would require a forest of 1,000 square miles.

The Glen Canyon Dam that can produce 1,000 megawatts of electricity is backed up by a reservoir 250 miles square. That's why we stopped building dams in the 1960s - because they were drowning scenic canyons and displacing populations.

Those 30-story windmills produce 1.5 megawatts apiece. Getting 1,000 megawatts would require a wind farm 75 miles square. Research into organic biofuels is also dismal, resulting in a consumption of food grain contributing to the world food shortage with little or no energy results. We must conserve and use the energy sources we now have, while keeping a vigilant control through the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Environmental Quality. Otherwise, we may soon join California and regress to the energy equivalent of the outhouse.