Pointwise decay for the wave equation on nonstationary spacetimes

The first of a two-part series, this paper assumes a weak local energy decay estimate holds and proves that solutions to the linear wave equation with variable coefficients in R, first-order terms, and a potential decay at a rate depending on how rapidly the vector fields of the metric, first-order terms, and potential decay at spatial infinity. We prove results for both stationary and nonstationary metrics. The proof uses local energy decay to prove an initial decay rate, and then uses the one-dimensional reduction repeatedly to achieve the full decay rate.