The Alternative Energy Future: Challenges for Technological Change

Abstract

(*See endnotes for complete contributor biographies.) Modern life needs energy, and lots of it. During the economic boom following World War II, securing adequate supplies of energy was not a big problem for the United States because we were able to meet our needs with domestic energy sources. But in the early 1970s, two events upset this comfortable situation. Introduced in 1970, the Clean Air Act clamped down on the uncontrolled burning of fossil fuels that had characterized domestic economic development for at least a century. And in 1971, the 1⁄2rst oil embargo demonstrated the supply risk inherent in an oil market no longer under U.S. control. Suddenly, the United States had an energy problem. In the ensuing forty years, eight American presidents proposed policies to solve this problem. Although philosophically different–for instance, President Reagan liked markets to work on their own, but President Carter preferred intervening in them–all had the same immutable goal: to guarantee a reliable, affordable, and clean supply of energy. But despite this common aspiration, the energy policies of all eight presidents shared another crucial attribute: they all failed to make much progress toward meeting their goal. Today, national energy policy remains in disarray. The proximate cause of the current situation is our failure to adopt a sensible policy to mitigate climate change. Only a few years ago, it seemed that the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference would produce a global agreement on mitigation policy,