13. Energy and the Environment

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The United States faces continuing, and growing, energy problems. Despite attempts to boost efficiency in the economy and pursue alternative energy resources, American society depends heavily on oil, especially imported oil. Rapidly increasing oil prices in 2005 and 2006 brought the problem home to the public at large, as well as to the political leadership, but there was very little direct response. Patterns of policymaking and living with high levels of energy consumption, may well take some time to change.

The first decade of the twenty-first century may be the time Americans decide some important questions about their relationship with their physical environment. The country must decide how much to value a clean and relatively unspoiled environment, compared to the value of mastering that environment through energy exploration and economic growth. Although renewable energy resources and some shifting of attitudes about the desirability of economic growth may soften these hard choices, the choices must still be made. The choices will arise with specific questions, such as whether to open more Alaskan lands to energy exploration or how to manage the oil shale of the western states. They may also arise over issues such as the disposal of increasing quantities of toxic industrial wastes and the need to develop cleaner means of producing the goods to which Americans have become accustomed. In the process, Americans will have to decide what they are willing to give up for a cleaner environment. Are styrofoam cups worth the emission of CFCs into the environment and the swelling of solid waste dumps? Are people willing to spend an hour or so every week recycling materials to prevent pollution and conserve energy? The sum of these individual choices, along with the regulatory choices that government makes, will determine the quality of life in the United States for years to come.

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