Robert Gramling – författare

In some coastal regions of the United States, such as western Louisiana, offshore oil development has long been welcomed. In others, such as northern California, it has been vehemently opposed. This book explores the reasons behind this paradox, looking at the people, the regions, and the issues in sociological and historical contexts.What has been in very short supply on this issue, as in a growing number of other cases of technological gridlock, is balanced analysis. That is what this book provides. The authors' case studies, derived from interviews with Louisiana and California residents and from environmental impact statements, demonstrate that easy answers are not the most valid ones. The region that should be considered unusual, they find, is coastal Louisiana, where historical, social, and environmental factors combine to favor the offshore oil industry. But this combination of factors, they argue, is unlikely to be found in other coastal regions of the U.S. in the near future.

In some coastal regions of the United States, such as western Louisiana, offshore oil development has long been welcomed. In others, such as northern California, it has been vehemently opposed. This book explores the reasons behind this paradox, looking at the people, the regions, and the issues in sociological and historical contexts.What has been in very short supply on this issue, as in a growing number of other cases of technological gridlock, is balanced analysis. That is what this book provides. The authors' case studies, derived from interviews with Louisiana and California residents and from environmental impact statements, demonstrate that easy answers are not the most valid ones. The region that should be considered unusual, they find, is coastal Louisiana, where historical, social, and environmental factors combine to favor the offshore oil industry. But this combination of factors, they argue, is unlikely to be found in other coastal regions of the U.S. in the near future.

The federal offshore oil leasing program has generated more than billion for the federal government, and the Outer Continental Shelf represents the greatest potential for oil and gas reserves remaining in the United States. But most U.S. coastal states oppose offshore development, and the battle resulting from these conflicting forces has raged through the last five presidential administrations and concurrent sessions of Congress. This book tells the history of the debate, puts it in perspective, and explores the prospects for future development. It traces the factors that led to the ascendancy of oil as an energy source, the emergence of the technology that made undersea extraction possible, the political forces that led to the dramatic offshore boom in the Gulf of Mexico, and the national policies that eventually produced the closing of virtually all offshore federal lands to the agency created within the Department of Interior to exploit them.

This book will be the first of its kind to offer intensive conversation analysis on patient-clinician interactions in the context of palliative medicine. The book focuses on a series of individual case studies of conversations that revolve, in each case, around one key critical term that is often evoked or understood differently by clinicians and patients.