Energy and Environment: The Bases for Public Policies

Public policies for energy and its environmental impact cannot be developed solely upon the bases of scientific and technical knowledge. Ad hoc and improvising measures to cope with energy problems have often induced as many difficulties as they have resolved. Policies based on present patterns of social behavior may prove ineffectual or un necessarily destructive to the environment if major changes in either energy supply or social values occur in the near future. The only rational basis for an energy policy which answers to more than expediency is an examination of the energy-related problems confronting present-day society and a projection of alternative courses of action towards preferred futures. To obtain an adequate conceptual basis for alternative futures, a conscious problem-identification and analysis effort should be constituted. The role of central government would be to stimulate and orchestrate the inde pendent efforts of many inquiries interrelated, however, by a network of free and full communication. The outcome of this effort should be the development of alternative proposi tions suitable for social choice. The attitudes and mecha nisms which would be necessary for the success of this effort would tend to induce a politics of problem solving and rational decision making within a context of generally preferred futures.