Communications/Book reviews

In terms of realism, however, managers have substantially revised their view of government action. Some 30% of the managers left the 'adequate' category and switched over to 'highly unrealistic to unrealistic'. There was an equal percentage of defectors from the 'realistic to highly realistic' category.

Looking at each industry separately, Table 5 shows some interesting results. Regarding the realism of the government's approach to the energy problem, the managers who work for the chemicals, electronics and energy/utilities industries seem to be the most dissatisfied. Indeed, as the table shows, there has been an increase in the 'highly unrealistic to unrealistic' category in all of these industries. In terms of timeliness, energy and automotive managers lead the defectors to the 'highly premature to premature' category. On the positive side, metals and electronics managers lead the list of defectors to the 'timely to very timely' category.

Conclusions

It is remarkable how little progress has been made over the last five years. As indicated by the similarity between the two surveys, the five years which have

elapsed since the Arab oil embargo have seen no particular improvement or deterioration in business perception of the nature, severity, causes and solutions of the energy crisis. As in 1974, most managers are dissatisfied with the government's approach to the energy situation. Accelerating nuclear power plant construction is still the most favoured potential solution, although the enthusiasm for it seems to be waning, notwithstanding Edison Electric Institute's recent full-page open letter to the President in the Wall Street Journal. 4

It may be that the energy crisis calls for something more than 'biting the bullet' for a short time. Perhaps a complete transformation of the human species and its 'advanced' technology may be too strong a demand. It may well be that former Defence Secretary Melvin Laird was echoing the feelings of millions of Americans and hundreds of thousands of managers when he said: 'There is no energy shortage, only a production shortage brought about by unwise government policy. '~ But by the same token, there may be a lot of wisdom in the conservationist societies' slogans: 'Waste not, want not' and 'Do less with less'; or the US Department of Energy's advertisement: 'Remember, oil

does not grow on trees'. In any case, Time's remedy for easing our dependence on foreign oil is a good and sound one and applicable to the entire energy situation as well:

What is needed to ease the nation's dependence on erratic foreign sources ofoil is spending, sacrifice and compromise?

A.G. Kefalas, University of Georgia, USA

and S. Mehra Memphis State University, USA.

1 Frederic D. Klein, 'Embargo alternative: patterns of energy use in US are changing five years after crisis', Wall Street Journal, 7 September 1978, p 1. Z A.G. Kefalas and A.B. Carrol, 'US business and the energy crisis', Energy Policy, Vol 4, No 3, September 1976, pp 268-272. 3 Wall Street Journal, editorial, 1978. 4 Wall Street Journal, 23 March 1979, p 12. 5Christopher Byron, 'Yes there is an energy crisis', Time, 10 October 1977, p 61. 6,Still a fuelish paradise', Time, 26 February 1978, p 65.

Book Reviews COAL A N D CRISIS: The Pol i t ical D i l emmas of Energy M a n a g e m e n t

by Wa l t e r A. Rosenbaum

107pp, £10.50, Praeger Publishers, New York, 1978

Throughout the 1970s the focus of controversy about energy has undoubtedly been nuclear power. However, as the world's nuclear programmes stumble to a standstill and governments drastically reduce their nuclear commitments, the focus of controversy in the 1980s seems likely to shift to coal. The psychological context will of course be different. The near-

religious fervour about nuclear energy, exhibited by both the believers and the unbelievers, seems unlikely to be paralleled in the case of coal. Coal is the antithesis of esoteric. It is a familiar everyday material, with a conspicuous centuries-long track record of service, and disservice, to humanity. The passions aroused by coal, both pro and con, are well founded in historical fact and community folk-memory. That, to be sure, does not make them any less intense - on the contrary.

Nevertheless, the very familiarity of coal may keep it from giving rise to an outpouring of publications like those - of every kind and quality - which have accompanied the nuclear issue. If so, the ommission will be unfortunate. Coal policy will have a crucially important

impact on the world's energy strategies. The coal policy decisions to be made in the next 10 years should attract at least as much informed debate as has recently characterized nuclear issues. It is therefore encouraging that the coal books are beginning to appear. If they are all of the standard set by Coal and Crisis, they will be a signal advance on the semi-popular nuclear literature, both for balance and for readability.

It must be noted immediately that Coal and Crisis concerns itself exclusively with the USA - as did most of the early literature of the nuclear controversy. Rosenbaum's presentation cannot therefore serve as a general vade mecum to coal policy. But Rosenbaum, Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida, has drafted an

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impressively clear, concise and intelligible introduction to the US coal scene. The tone of the writing conveys, too, a sense of measured urgency very much in keeping with the subject.

Rosenbaum concentrates not on technical or even economic issues, but on the political, institutional and policy context of coal in the USA. He notes that the American public still refuses to believe in any 'energy crisis' - at most blaming difficulties on 'corporate conspiracy' - and that the resulting poli t ical c l imate exercises a complicating influence on energy decisions, not least those relating to coal. Rosenbaum devotes considerable space to the conflicts between private and public bodies, and between federal and state government, which play a prominent role in US coal policy. Such factors are less prominent in Europe. In the USA the coal industry, essentially privately owned, has never lost its aggressive self-confidence in confrontation with governments and organized labour. The European industry, on the contrary, is still acutely defensive after two decades of decline, and the political in-fighting, while intense, is not - thus far - earmarked by confrontations as recurrently bitter as those in the USA.

The environmental problems of the US coal industry are also of a different order to those in Europe. Occupational health and safety in US mines continues to lag well behind best European practice, as does management and restitution of strip-mined land. However, it is arguable that recent US moves to control the side-effects of coal combustion are in advance of those in Europe.

All these areas Rosenbaum explores with level-headed insight. The one major shortcoming of the book is its treatment of the larger issue of energy strategy. The book tends, despite many well intentioned qualifications, to accept an essentially supply-oriented policy context, and to regard 'energy conservation' as a form of 'sacrifice', leading to the familiar asymmetrical judgements about feasibility and public acceptability of different policy options. Rosenbaum also follows the traditional practice of comparing coal with nuclear power for generation of electricity, without pursuing comparisons to note

that neither can compare with investment in high-efficiency end-use technologies.

The cost numbers Rosenbaum quotes are much too offhand, and the economic broad brush he uses paints in only the less interesting parts of the energy picture. More thorough overall analyses of the type now available in a number of industrial countries (eg the recent study by Leach et aP) give quite another view of the future direction of coal policy. If the new high-efficiency strategies do continue to develop, it is even possible, albeit on a longer timescale, that coal may go the way of nuclear power. But this seems unlikely. Unlike nuclear power, coal has a long history of major economic significance; and it is a material of great versatility,

Book reviews

whose properties are only now on the threshold of exploitation. Unlike uranium, coal seems likely to be a material whose value will increase. Whatever the case, Rosenbaum argues forcefully that it is time to make policy criteria explicit. Then and only then can we expect to make optimal choices.

Walter Patterson Friends of the Earth

London, UK

1G. Leach, C. Lewis, F. Romig, A. van Buren and G. Foley, A Low Energy Strategy for the United Kingdom, International Institute for Environment and Development, and Science Reviews Ltd, London, 1979.

LIMITING OIL IMPORTS

by D. Bohi and M. Russell

356 pp, $22.50, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, 1978

Over the past three decades oil import policy has been subject to a changing world oil market and a shifting role for the USA within it. Through all of these changes, two recurring issues have been discussed:

• what costs should consumers and necessarily taxpayers in the USA be required to bear for the uncertainty of future benefits; and

• how should these costs be distributed.

This monograph by Douglas Bohi and Milton Russell is directed at extensively analysing the resolution of these issues over time as well as attempting to put the considerations in sharp political relief. The evaluation of oil import policy has truly been an experience in political economy and the analysis, as the authors correctly conclude, cannot be put solely into the narrow confines of economic theory. Neither, of course, can the policy be viewed independently as a matter of ideology. Adequate emphasis is placed upon the impact of

oil import policy on resource allocation, income distribution, and market structure.

With this objective, the analysis of US import policy proceeds on an institutional and then on a theoretical level. A detailed history of the institutional aspects of the mandatory quota programme is given with regard to how the programme evolved and was implemented. The discussion extends beyond the end of the programme and encompasses the reformulation of energy policy culminating with the Energy Policy and Conservation Act in 1975. The theoretical analysis identifies and measures the effects of the programme on consumers, the domestic industry, and on imports. The final stage of the study brings the institutional and theoretical implications of past import policy together and infers from this integration the prospects for the future.

The rote of imported energy and estimates of prospective energy supply, as Bohi and Russell correctly point out, has fluctuated in the USA and this fluctuation has been accompanied by changing views on appropriate policies toward the domestic oil supply industry. As early as 1923, fear was expressed that the USA was potentially short of fuel. Consequently, energy supply insecurity was an important element in the design of an import policy. The goal was simply to devise and implement

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