Dependence on Fossil Fuel
The industrial nations have undert
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The industrial nations have undertaken a number of programs designed to reduce their dependence on fossil fuel, and in part this has been a response to their dependence on oil from unstable areas such as the Middle East. The impetus for this came first from the oil shortages of the early 1970s, shortages which reminded the West how fragile its relations with the oil-producing nations could be and how much international relations were coming to depend on oil. As a result, the Western nations undertook a program to reduce oil consumption, with some success. Automobiles were made smaller and more efficient, and increases in the price of oil and gasoline helped reduce consumption to a degree as well. However, reducing the use of oil is only part of reducing dependence on oil from a specific region, and the Middle East remains the region providing the most oil for use in the industrialized nations of the West today. Such efforts are only the beginning of a massive restructuring, a reshaping of the national and even international infrastructures by which nations conduct their business and provide for their populations. The world reacted first to the energy crisis in the 1970s by developing a variety of programs that would address the issue of energy consumption and acquisition, and these programs often increased the role of government in regulating the supply and demand of energy. In the 1980s, various developed, developing, and former Communist-bloc nations e
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f the system at the time it is performed" (Hardin, 1993, 11). Wasting gasoline is one thing in a time of plenty, but it became quite another with the oil crisis of the early 1970s.
QUESTIONING GOVERNMENT CONTROLS
However, the issue being addressed by governments today is whether or not the means being used to produce, distribute, and conserve energy are proper or efficient. The move toward privatization is a recognition that market controls have not been working and that perhaps competition in the commons will produce better answers. This remains to be seen, but it is clear that countries are testing the approach by moving toward deregulation and privatization as they restructure their basic infrastructure, especially in terms of their energy industries.
Tietenberg (1992) notes that market mechanisms create pressures for recycling and reuse that are generally in the right direction, though they are not always of the necessary intensity:
Higher disposal costs and increasing scarcity of virgin materials do create a larger demand for recycling. This is already evident for a number of products, such as those containing copper or aluminum (Tietenberg, 1992, 218).
At the same time, there is evidence that this approach may no
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2938
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)
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