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In the decades that followed World War II, cheap and plentiful oil helped to fuel rapid economic growth, ensure political stability, and reinforce the legitimacy of liberal democracies. Yet waves of price increases and the use of the so-called “oil weapon” by a group of Arab oil-producing countries in the early 1970s demonstrated the West’s dependence on this vital resource and its vulnerability to economic volatility and political conflicts. Oil and Sovereignty analyzes the national and international strategies that American and European governments formulated to restructure the world of oil and deal with the era’s disruptions. It shows how a variety of different actors combined diplomacy, knowledge creation, economic restructuring, and public relations in their attempts to impose stability and reassert national sovereignty.
"The management of public lands in the West is a matter of long-standing and oft-contentious debates. The government must balance the interests of a variety of stakeholders, including extractive industries like oil and timber; farmers, ranchers, and fishers; Native Americans; tourists; and environmentalists. Local, state, and government policies and approaches change according to the vagaries of scientific knowledge, the American and global economies, and political administrations. Occasionally, debates over public land usage erupt into major incidents, as with the armed occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016. While a number of scholars work on the politics and policy of public land management, there has been no central book on the topic since the publication of Charles Davis's Western Public Lands and Environmental Politics (Westview, 2001). In The Environmental Politics and Policy of Western Public Lands, Erika Allen Wolters and Brent Steel have assembled a stellar cast of scholars to consider long-standing issues and topics such as endangered species, land use, and water management while addressing more recent challenges to western public lands like renewable energy siting, fracking, Native American sovereignty, and land use rebellions. Chapters also address the impact of climate change on policy dimensions and scope. The Environmental Politics and Policy of Western Public Lands is co-published with Oregon State University Open Educational Resources, who will release an open access edition alongside this print edition"--
In September 2017, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, completely upending the energy grid of the small island. The nearly year-long power outage that followed vividly shows how the new climate reality intersects with race and access to energy. The island is home to brown and black US citizens who lack the political power of those living in the continental US. As the world continues to warm and storms like Maria become more commonplace, it is critical that we rethink our current energy system to enable reliable, locally produced, and locally controlled energy without replicating the current structures of power and control. In Revolutionary Power, Shalanda Baker arms those made most vulnerable by our current energy system with the tools they need to remake the system in the service of their humanity. She argues that people of color, poor people, and indigenous people must engage in the creation of the new energy system in order to upend the unequal power dynamics of the current system. Revolutionary Power is a playbook for the energy transformation complete with a step-by-step analysis of the key energy policy areas that are ripe for intervention. Baker tells the stories of those who have been left behind in our current system and those who are working to be architects of a more just system. She draws from her experience as an energy-justice advocate, a lawyer, and a queer woman of color to inspire activists working to build our new energy system. Climate change will force us to rethink the way we generate and distribute energy and regulate the system. But how much are we willing to change the system? This unique moment in history provides an unprecedented opening for a deeper transformation of the energy system, and thus, an opportunity to transform society. Revolutionary Power shows us how.
With the dramatic changes OPEC precipitated in the structure of world energy markets during the 1970s, energy became a central concern to policymakers throughout the industrialized West. This book ex-amines the responses of public officials in three leading European nations—the Federal Republic of Germany, France, and the Netherlands—to the energy crisis. As the study shows, the proposed energy programs in the three countries shared remarkable similarities; yet the policy outcomes were very different. To explain why, Michael T. Hatch goes beyond the specific content of government energy policy to include an analysis of the policymaking process itself. At the heart of the study is an exploration of the various dimensions of nuclear policy in West Germany. The political consensus on nuclear power that prevailed in the initial years following the energy crisis disintegrated as antinuclear "citizens' initiatives," the courts, and trade unions, as well as the traditional political parties, entered the policymaking process. Subsequent government efforts to resolve the political stalemate over nuclear power foundered in a morass of domestic electoral politics and an international debate over nuclear proliferation. Extending the analysis to comparisons with French and Dutch nuclear strategies, Hatch argues that the critical factor in determining nuclear policy was the manner in which the political system structured the nuclear debate. In contrast to West Germany, where the electoral and parliamentary systems enhanced the influence of the antinuclear "Greens," the electoral system and constellation of political parties in France served to dissipate the influence of the antinuclear forces. Thus in France the nuclear program en-countered few impediments. In the Netherlands, as in West Germany, government policy was paralyzed in the face of antinuclear sentiment across a broad spectrum of Dutch society. Hatch has provided here not only a useful examination of the development of energy policy in western Europe but also a case study of the close interplay between policy and politics.
Prior to May 2015, the oil-rich jurisdiction of Alberta had, for over four decades, been a one-party state. During that time, the rule of the Progressive Conservatives essentially went unchallenged, with critiques of government policy falling on deaf ears and Alberta ranking behind other provinces in voter turnout. Given the province's economic reliance on oil revenues, a symbiotic relationship also developed between government and the oil industry. Cross-national studies have detected a correlation between oil-dependent economies and authoritarian rule, a pattern particularly evident in Africa and the Middle East. Alberta Oil and the Decline of Democracy in Canada sets out to test the "oil inhibits democracy" hypothesis in the context of an industrialized nation in the Global North. In probing the impact of Alberta's powerful oil lobby on the health of democracy in the province, contributors to the volume engage with an ongoing discussion of the erosion of political liberalism in the West. In addition to examining energy policy and issues of government accountability in Alberta, they explore the ramifications of oil dependence in areas such as Aboriginal rights, environmental policy, labour law, women's equity, urban social policy, and the arts. If, as they argue, reliance on oil has weakened democratic structures in Alberta, then what of Canada as whole, where the short-term priorities of the oil industry continue to shape federal policy? The findings in this book suggest that, to revitalize democracy, provincial and federal leaders alike must find the courage to curb the influence of the oil industry on governance.
Proposed energy resource development in the arid western United States raises a number of potential problems for an environment that does not have a great deal of resiliency. Projected population increases associated with large-scale development activities may go beyond the capacity of small, isolated rural communities to absorb them; and constraints on western agricultural and industrial development—for example, demands for water already exceeding the supply available—also limit energy development. The authors of this wide-ranging book first evaluate western energy resources, then objectively discuss the consequences of development on the region’s physical and social environments. Among the questions they consider are: Who will reap the economic benefits of development, and who will bear the environmental costs? What will be the effects on the environment? The social structure? The quality of life? Are open spaces a national treasure in their present form, or should they be regarded as space available for development? What are the unique demands of reclamation in the arid west? And, given the recent trend of western states-rights militancy and shifts of population to the southwest, what impact will new federal and state policies have on resource management?