Power special: The critical years

As this issue goes to press, Consolidated Edison, that much maligned electric utility serving New York City´s demanding populace, faces bankruptcy unless the New York State legislature takes measures to provide state aid to the ailing power company. Part of its trouble stems from a rise in the utility´s oil bill of $450 million, a figure Con Ed chairman Charles Luce notes is more than three times the company´s 1973 dividend payments. Undoubtedly Con Ed´s problems will be somehow solved. But, coming on the heels of a virtually nationwide shortage of gasoline at consumer pumps, the power company´s problem seems just one more in an open-ended series of minicrises that together may characterize the next several years ¿ not only in the U.S., but in advanced nations everywhere.