The Environmental Impact Issues in Energy Development in the United States

Abstract

Possibly the most interesting policy confrontations of recent years could be found in those areas where environmental and energy choices clash (or appear to) head on. Both areas are of the nature of political sacred cows to some constituency or other, and both have been preferred to the general public as being in “crisis.” It is in situations such as these, where problematical and emotionally charged issues meet, that the more interesting and difficult policy analyses lie. In this paper we shall, in a general fashion, catalog the environmental aspects of the energy problem from the point of view of one observer in the U.S. Department of Energy. Of necessity, both because of limited perspective and information, the viewpoint is flawed. However, the opinion of the evolution of environmental/energy analyses gets more accurate toward the present, as my own experience is greater. Nonetheless, I hope the reader will permit me a minimum of philosophy.