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State, Ecology and Independence: Policy Responses to the Energy Crisis in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Extract

The energy crisis has, at least for the time being, been replaced in newspaper headlines and public attention by other, more fashionable, and seemingly more pressing preoccupations. In the United States, for example, the dilemmas posed by the shortages and spiralling price increases of the 1970s gave way to different policy problems and the Reagan Administration has all but ceased to consider the energy question important.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

1 See for example the Editorial of the Oil and Gas Journal, 17 05 1982.Google Scholar Also, the comments by J. Tanner, Editor of Petroleum Information International in Time Magazine, 22 02 1982, p. 45.Google Scholar

2 These approaches were selected on the basis of a systematic examination of the numerous programmes and proposals that were put forward by the various groups and individuals that participated in the energy debate in the United States during the 1970s. The six approaches do not necessarily represent the exact positions of the specific proponents. Rather, they are the result of an effort to identify major energy perspectives. Moreover, the choice of approaches was not based mainly on the relative economic and political power held by their advocates. Instead, the typology is devised to clarify the different positions across the whole spectrum of ideological responses to the energy crisis.

3 The most articulate advocates of this approach were oil and gas companies' executives who participated in a number of forums and research projects dealing with the energy crisis such as the Energy Policy Project of the Ford Foundation, the Research Committee of the Committee for Economic Development and the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on the International Oil Crisis. The best academic defence of this approach can be found in Institute for Contemporary Studies, ed., No Time to Confuse (San Francisco, Calif.: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1975).Google Scholar

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14 For a detailed treatment of the Americans for Energy Independence see McFarland, A. S., Public Interest Lobbies: Decision Making on Energy (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1976), pp. 100–5.Google Scholar

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