Robert O. Vos

Sheldon Kamieniecki

George A. Gonzalez

As a contribution to public policy and to help educate students about natural resource issues, this book identifies the likely "hot spots" of environmental policy and presents alternative and often opposing points of view on the major controversies that are likely to be with us well into the next century. Among the topics covered are comparative risk assessment; market incentives in environmental regulation; environmental justice; public versus private management of public lands; international trade and sustainable development; and the relationship between national security and environmental protection.

Controversies in Achieving Sustainability

Flashpoints in Environmental Policymaking

The forward progress of society is not automatic and should not be taken for granted. The assassination President John F. Kennedy in 1963 ended his effort to deploy American prestige, power to forward progressive change worldwide. Today, there are political forces seeking to stop progressive social, political, economic change. Whatever their reasons, such forces are conspiring to impose authoritarianism to suppress the public’s desire for just, democratic governance, government. The brutality, violence, viciousness, racism (dystopia) of authoritarianism is becoming more and more the hallmark of world politics. Perhaps the most glaring aspect of this dystopia is the fact that the American state has been almost continuously at war for the past roughly 30 years – including a sinister, dastardly drone assassination program. One means to obscure the ongoing conspiracy to ultimately impose outright dictatorship on the American people and the rest of the world is to smear, malign critics of this conspiracy as guilt of conspiracy theory – advocating, embracing baseless fantasies. Worse yet, proponents of conspiracy theory (by implication) are deemed as psychologically suspect for arguing that political elites are engaged in a process to eliminate all meaningful vestiges of democracy.

Popular Culture, Conspiracy Theory, and the Star Trek Text

What set the United States on the path to developing commercial nuclear energy in the 1950s, and what led to the seeming demise of that industry in the late 1970s? Why, in spite of the depletion of fossil fuels and the obvious dangers of global warming, has the United States moved so slowly toward adopting alternatives? In Energy and Empire, George A. Gonzalez presents a clear and concise argument demonstrating that economic elites tied their advocacy of the nuclear energy option to post-1945 American foreign policy goals. At the same time, these elites opposed government support for other forms of energy, such as solar, that cannot be dominated by one nation. While researchers have blamed safety concerns and other factors as helping to arrest the expansion of domestic nuclear power plant construction, Gonzalez points to an entirely different set of motivations stemming from the loss of Americas domination/control of the enrichment of nuclear fuel. Once foreign countries could enrich their own fuel, civilian nuclear power ceased to be a lever the United States could use to economically/politically dominate other nations. Instead, it became a major concern relating to nuclear weapons proliferation.

The Politics of Nuclear and Solar Power in the United States

Energy and Empire

Throughout the US oil and gas shale are being 'hydrofracked' to produce petroleum and natural gas. Oil (or tar) sands from Canada is being 'processed' – thereby generating large amounts of crude. This book places the unconventional fossil fuels revolution that is taking place in North America within the context of great power politics.

George A. Gonzalez

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