to the environment. As the 2010 BP-Horizon oil rig
explosion in the Gulf of Mexico made evident, we
are drilling and mining for fossil fuels, including oil,
gas, and coal, in places that not only are environmen-
tally sensitive and require risky, complex technology
[see Documents 172] but also make it necessary to
transport the fuel huge distances [see Document 174].
Government subsidies, offered as an antidote to the
Great Recession that began in December 2007, created
renewed interest in fuel-efficient vehicles and non-fossil
fuels. However, by 2015, as gasoline prices declined and
fracking reduced the need for imported oil, Americans
went back to buying gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles
and the marked for small cars dissipated.
Meanwhile, countries such as China, India,
and Brazil, with their huge populations and grow-
ing importance in the marketplace, have been flex-
ing their economic muscles. With hundreds of mil-
lions of people aspiring to live Western-style lives
[see Document 175]—hoping to buy cars, or at least
motorbikes, and add increased quantities of beef and
pork to their diets—these countries are competing to
obtain a greater share of the world’s finite supply of
oil and other resources [see Document 175].
Americans continue to be hesitant to build new
nuclear plants, and low gas prices have recently
made some nuclear power plants uncompetitive. The
economic and environmental viability of ethanol,
despite being encouraged by congressional subsidies,
remains questionable [see Document 183].4
Wind turbines currently produce nearly five per-
cent of the county’s energy, and solar panels, the cost
of which have decreased markedly during the past
decade, now account for nearly one percent of U.S.
energy generation. The production of carbon-free
electricity throughout the United States is within the
realm of possibility [see Document 169]. Potential
energy in waste materials and in garbage buried in
landfills across the country remains underutilized.
But determining what kinds of alternative fuels and
fuel sources make the most economic sense and will
create the least environmental damage requires care-
ful scientific and technological analysis, and devel-
oping new clean energy sources demands substan-
tial economic investment. During the Obama years
Congress more than doubled funding for alternative
energy research, but this funding is expected to be
decreased in the 2018 budget.California chef, restaurateur, and food activist Alice
Waters, who waged war on the tasteless produce and
highly processed foods so readily available on super-
market shelves. By the end of the 1990s, urban green
markets were becoming popular, and chefs, food writ-
ers, nutritionists, and environmentalists were suggesting
that Americans change their eating habits both for envi-
ronmental and health reasons [see Document 168]. Dur-
ing the past twenty-five years, the expansion of commu-
nity- supported agriculture groups (CSAs), which sell
shares in the annual produce of local farms, have helped
to make small organic farms more viable by providing
them with an assured income. In 2009, Michele Obama,
the president’s wife, had a kitchen garden planted on the
grounds of the White House, partly to supply greens for
the White House table, but mainly to promote healthy
eating habits among the nation’s schoolchildren.
While locavores and slow food proponents were
seeking out heirloom tomatoes and wild rice and
objecting to the use of pesticides, genetically modi-
fied seed, and cloned animals, many farmers in the
developing world and elsewhere were glad to be able
to take advantage of the Green Revolution that was
made possible by the development of new plant vari-
eties. Their increased crop yield continues to ensure
an adequate food supply for most of the world’s 7.5
billion people [see Document 151].
In the United States, the owners of huge farms,
made possible by technological advances and encour-
aged by government policy, are happy to use GM seed
and work closely with powerful agribusinesses. How-
ever, the massive narrowing of the food plant vari-
eties marketed and grown in the United States and
abroad poses a potential serious long-term threat to
the global food supply.
Another consequence of U.S. policy has been
the steady rise in the importation of fresh produce.
In 2003-05 about 44 percent of fresh fruit and 16
percent of fresh vegetables consumed in the United
States were imported, compared with only 31 per-
cent of fresh fruit and 9 percent of fresh vegetables
in 1983-85.^3
Fueling a Twenty-First Century
America
A major issue for the twenty-first century is how to
provide sufficient energy for industry, transportation,
and buildings without causing irreparable damage
Politicizing the Environmental Debate, 2000–2017 205