US energy policy: crisis and complacency. [Review and recommendations]
The starting assumption of the authors was that the United States policy process had failed to respond effectively to the energy crisis. In the course of doing the research for this book, they report that their initial perception of policy failure was incorrect. Although the process of evolving an energy policy was fragmented, chaotic, and incremental, by the end of 1980 the United States had a workable energy policy. They found that between 1973 and 1980 the United States policy system had been developing a new national consensus on energy. That consensus existed, at least in rudimentary form, when the Reagan administration came into office. What occurred between the oil embargo and the advent of the Reagan administration came into office. What occurred between the oil embargo and the advent of the Reagan adiminstration was a process of new policy formulation similar to what had occurred whenever the nation had faced policy crises in the past. The failure to understand both how the national policymaking process works and what it had accomplished before the advent of the Reagan administration has and will have costly consequences for our society. As the book explicates in some detail, those costs are clearly represented in the radical rejection by the Reagan adminstration of the nation's achievement in energy policy. In moving the management of energy into the marketplace, the Reagan adminstration rejected the fundamental tenet of the conservative: it rejected both the procedures and the mechanisms that for over two hundred years have provided national stability. The book concludes with a set of recommendations for actions that the authors feel are necessary if the nation is to have a stable energy future. They beleive that energy is so central to the nation's welfare that it should not be used as an instrument for experimenting with untried concepts.
- OSTI ID:
- 5043619
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
292000 -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Supply
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293000* -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Policy
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DOCUMENT TYPES
ENERGY POLICY
ENERGY SUPPLIES
EVALUATION
GOVERNMENT POLICIES
IMPLEMENTATION
NORTH AMERICA
PUBLIC POLICY
RECOMMENDATIONS
REVIEWS
USA