Energy and Society: Public Views and Responses to the Emerging Energy Regime

This work represents an exploratory study of public attitudes about energy availability and measures related to addressing shortfalls in energy supplies. The study also examines household responses to increased energy costs during this earliest stages of a potential new energy regime. The study finds mixed views about energy availability, especially in the foreseeable future. Despite this, the study finds overwhelming support for energy conservation and alternative energy development. The study also finds that recent increases in energy costs caused substantial financial and economic hardships among Ohio households.The Social Responsibility Initiativ

Local governments that offer greater incentives for businessesdo not retrench welfare services

In the pursuit of economic development and growth, many local governments in the US are increasingly turning to offering lucrative incentives to businesses such as tax incentives, loans and other subsidies. Many scholars and commentators have become concerned that these incentives are going hand in hand with the gutting of social welfare services. In new research, Lazarus Adua and Linda Lobao find no such relationship between counties putting in place business incentives and cutting services. In fact, such counties were actually more likely to provide a greater number of social services

Explaining Residential Energy Consumption: A Focus on Location and Race Differences in Natural Gas Use

Researchers have long considered factors related to residential energy consumption. We contribute to this genre of work by exploring how residential location (rural-urban) and race are related to residential natural gas consumption. We also consider whether these relationships, if they exist, are functions of differences in housing characteristics, investment in energy efficiency, and weather conditions. Analyzing four waves of the Residential Energy Consumption Surveys, we find that natural gas consumption differs by residential location only to the extent that investment in energy efficiency and weather conditions are not taken into consideration. We also find race differences in natural gas consumption, with African-Americans consuming more per year than whites. African-Americans’ higher natural gas consumption persists even after the effects of housing characteristics, investment in energy efficiency, weather conditions, and other critical covariates of energy consumption are statistically held constant. More work, especially field research, is needed to understand why African-Americans consume more natural gas than other groups

Equatorial Guinea Perspectives on the United States: the significance of American Missionary Activities and Internal Equatoguinean Politics (Expanded Version)

Equatorial Guinea is a small country in western Central Africa, consisting of three physically separate major territories and a number of tiny islands. The major territories are Rio Muni, which is on the continent sandwiched between Cameroon and Gabon, and the insular territories of Bioko (formally Fernando Po) in the Bight of Biafra and Annobon, which is about 357 kilometers off the coast and just south of the equator. The tiny islands are Corisco, Belobi, Mbane, Conga, Cocotiers, and Elobey, all located off the coast of Rio Muni. Equatorial Guinea is the only Spanish-speaking country in Africa. It gained independence from Spain on 12 October 1968. Since independence, the country's politics has been dominated by the Esangui clan, from the Mongomo district on the mainland. Equatorial Guinea is among Africa's top oil-producing nations and for that reason has become a major commercial partner of the United States. This small country, with just over a half-million people, is currently the fourth-largest recipient of U.S. foreign direct investment in sub-Saharan Africa, surpassed only by the much larger countries of Nigeria, South Africa, and Angola.National profile; Relations with the United States; From Mid 1800 to 1979; Relations during the Presidency of Francisco Macias Nguema; Relations after the Overthrow of the Macias Nguema Regime; Perspectives on the United States; Post-Macias Nguema Era; Popular culture; September 11; Outlook for the Coming Year

To cool a sweltering earth: Does energy efficiency improvement offset the climate impacts of lifestyle?

As technical efficiency improvement in energy use remains a touchstone measure to curb greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, there is substantial concern about whether this approach can offset the large and expanding impacts of human actions. Critics contend that without adjustments to the prevailing consumptive lifestyle, energy efficiency improvement will generate only token reductions in GHG emissions. I address this concern by examining the extent to which technical efficiency improvement in energy use offsets the impacts of housing-related lifestyle on GHG emissions. I build from two perspectives, the physical-technical-economic models that consider energy efficiency improvement as a potent strategy to curb residential energy consumption, and the lifestyle and social-behavioral approach, which questions this view. The analyses reveal consistent positive relationship between lifestyle and energy consumption. The results also indicate that energy efficiency improvement has mixed effects on energy consumption. In fact, model-based figures show that technical efficiency improvement in energy use leads to slightly higher energy consumption if it is not accompanied by adjustments to lifestyle.Efficiency improvement Climate change Lifestyle

Even for the environment, context matters! States, households, and residential energy consumption

This study adopts a multi-level approach to examine the extent to which state- and household-level factors shape residential energy consumption in the United States, focusing on efficiency improvement and affluence. Analyzing the 2009 Residential Energy Consumption Survey, state-level energy efficiency data from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), and other sources, we find that state context significantly influences energy consumption at the household level. Households in states scoring high on energy efficiency consume significantly less residential energy than those in states scoring low on the measure. At the household level, the analysis reveals mixed relationships between investment in energy efficiency technologies and residential energy consumption, as some measures of efficiency technology are negatively related to residential energy consumption, others are positively related to it. In regard to affluence, state-level measures do not emerge as significant predictors of residential energy consumption. At the household level, however, affluence drives residential energy consumption, which, in turn, is a significant driver of carbon dioxide emissions. Our study makes an important contribution to the social scientific literature on energy consumption, illuminating distinct relationships at different levels. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that simultaneously examines the impacts of factors measured at both the household (micro) and state (meso) levels