Introduction

• Main Author: Cartledge, Bryan
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University PressOxford 1993
• Subjects: Iceland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198584131.003.0001; https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/52520216/isbn-9780198584131-book-part-1.pdf

Abstract Few areas of public policy confront the governments of the world with sharper or more complex dilemmas than that of energy generation. This second series of Linacre Lectures exposes and defines the dilemmas, principally in the environmental context; but, as several of the lecturers acknowledged, few governments can give absolute priority to minimizing the adverse environmental impact of energy generation. A few countries, blessed in this respect by geography, are able to generate all or most of their electricity from the renewable and (usually) environmentally benign resource of hydropower: in Europe, Norway and Iceland and to a lesser extent Austria and Switzerland are in this fortunate position. As Peter Hardi shows, however, even hydroelectric power can be highly controversial in the environmental context: the Nagymaros dam project in Hungary, which would have deformed the outstandingly beautiful Danube Bend, has been suspended in deference to sustained public protest and to Hardi’s own report on the environmental impact of the project.