This book presents an analytic history of American energy policy, examining policy failures and how the policy process itself leads to failure.

US Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure is an analytic history of American energy policy. For the past forty years, the US government has tried to develop comprehensive policies on energy, yet these efforts have failed repeatedly. These failures have not resulted from a lack of will or funds but rather from an inability to differentiate between what could be undertaken and what could actually be accomplished. This book explains how and why various policy efforts have come about, shows why politicians have been eager to back them, and analyzes why they have inevitably failed. Over the past four decades, US energy policy makers have pursued not just policies that have failed but also a policy process that leads to failure.

"U.S. Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure is an analytic history of American energy policy. For the past forty years, the U.S. government has tried to develop comprehensive policies on energy, yet these efforts have failed repeatedly. These failures have not resulted from a lack of will or funds but rather from an inability to differentiate between what could be undertaken and what could actually be accomplished. This book explains how and why various policy efforts have come about, shows why politicians have been eager to back them, and analyzes why they have inevitably failed. Over the past four decades, U.S. energy policy makers have pursued not just policies that have failed but also a policy process that leads to failure."--Publisher's website.

When Barack Obama entered the White House, he faced numerous urgent issues. Despite the citizens' demand for strong presidential leadership, President Obama, following a long-standing precedent for the development and implementation of major policies, appointed administrators--so-called policy czars--charged with directing the response to the nation's most pressing crises. Combining public administration and political science approaches to the study of the American presidency and institutional politics, Justin S. Vaughn and José D. Villalobos argue that the creation of policy czars is a strategy for combating partisan polarization and navigating the federal government's complexity. They present a series of in-depth analyses of the appointment, role, and power of various czars: the energy czar in the mid-1970s, the drug czar in the late 1980s, the AIDS czar in the 1990s, George W. Bush's trio of national security czars after 9/11, and Obama's controversial czars for key domestic issues. Laying aside inflammatory political rhetoric, Vaughn and Villalobos offer a sober, empirical analysis of what precisely constitutes a czar, why Obama and his predecessors used czars, and what role they have played in the modern presidency.

Canada and the United States explains, across fifteen diverse areas, why and how Canada and the United States are still so different. The book discusses whether or not these differences are growing, the key results of such differences, and the major challenges to be faced in each system. Focusing on institutions, political cultures, and social values, the book shows how both federal systems are extremely complex and how our institutions, cultures, and historical experiences often lead to very different outcomes. The fifth edition discusses the emergence of vital new issues, including the pandemic and its effects, climate change, energy requirements, increasing international tensions, and new trade problems. This book also reviews massive budgetary changes, new forms of protest emerging in Canada, and an ongoing political crisis in the US instigated bya former president convincing millions that the 2020 election was a hoax. Written by leading scholars in their field, Canada and the United States reveals how the two countries compare when dealing with similar problems that often spill across the border.

Given the potential disruption of climate change, understanding energy issues and technologies is more important than ever if societies are to make informed choices on policy. Now in its third edition, Introduction to Energy explores the crucial issues connected to modern energy technology and its uses. Fully updated to respond to the substantial developments in the energy sector, the book expands on the relationships of energy use and climate change; of energy availability and the alleviation of world poverty; and of energy consumption and the sustainability of the lifestyles of people in the industrialized world. Directed at a broad readership, it assumes no prior technical expertise and avoids complex mathematical formulations, continuing to provide a standard for introductory energy courses. It is also a useful supplementary text for programs in public policy, business law and resource economics.

Conversations about energy law and policy are paramount, undergoing new scrutiny and characterizations. Energy Follies: Missteps, Fiascos, and Successes of America's Energy Policy explores how a century of energy policies, rather than solving our energy problems, often made them worse; how Congress and other federal agencies grappled with remedying seemingly myopic past decisions. Sam Kalen and Robert R. Nordhaus investigate how misguided or naïve energy policy decisions caused or contributed to past energy crises, and how it took years to unwind their effects. This work recounts the decades-long struggles to move to market supply and pricing policies for oil and natural gas in order to make competition work in the electric power industry and to tame emissions from the coal fleet left to us by the 1970s coal policies. These historic policies continue to present struggles, and this book reflects on how future challenges ought to learn from our past mistakes.