Sustainable Energy Futures: Economic and Ecological Ramifications of U.S. Energy Policy
This article comes from a new casebook on environmental ethics co-authored with James Martin Schramm and forthcoming from Orbis Books in 2004. [1] Two primary visions of the future vie with each other to control the direction of U.S. energy policy. Developmentalists such as President Bush and Vice President Cheney advocate increasing the supply of […]
Nuclear Power, ANWR, and Global Warming
[1] Three specific problems in the Bush administration’s policies warrant further analysis: 1) the renewed commitment to nuclear energy, 2) the exploration for oil in ANWR, and 3) the administration’s dismissal of global warming. The renewed commitment to nuclear energy is highly risky, even if, as the administration claims, technological advances have made an already […]
Assessing Major Energy Options
The energy alternatives available to energy policy-makers are too numerous to consider in detail. Below is a list of the major alternatives, notes on each, and a summary assessment. 1) Conservation or energy efficiency, while technically not a source of energy, is an alternative that avoids the increased use of other sources. a. Forms: more […]