The energy bill enacted in late December seemed a fitting finale to a year of muddling through—and an unpromising augury for 1976. It ended months of uncertainty over petroleum pricing, but it put off the formulation of a comprehensive national energy policy. Two years after the oil embargo was imposed by Middle Eastern producers, the United States was not much better prepared to cope with an energy crisis or to manage its long-run needs than it had been in October of 1973.
The year was a period of marking time on a number of resource and environmental issues, such as strip mining of coal and national land use policy. The issue of nuclear power plants remained as divisive as ever.
The fifth anniversary of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) passed quietly in December. If it ushered in no fresh initiatives, neither did it mark any visible weakening of the nation's commitment to saf-guard land, water, and air and to shield the public from toxic substances. The commitment was perhaps sustained as much by a faith in environmental objectives as by evidence of progress toward them. Progress was difficult to measure, and so was the effectiveness of various programs. Opinions continued to differ on air, water, and noise standards; and the relative roles of regulatory controls and economic incentives were actively debated.
But if 1975 was a year without new crises or breakthroughs, hardly a day passed without a major news story about resources or the environment. A number of the issues highlighted during the year were of more than passing interest—the threat to the atmosphere and human health posed by ordinary household products such as aerosol sprays; growing (if reluctant) acceptance of stack gas scrubbers; stirrings of reform in the utilities industry that could lead to a more sensible pricing structure for electricity; portents of a slowdown in the growth of agricultural productivity; and the establishment of a better climate for dealing with international resource and environmental questions—to mention a few. All are issues that transcend the year just past and promise to be central concerns for years to come.
A version of this article appeared in print in the Winter 1976 issue of Resources magazine.
