ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the executive agencies that deal with the geosciences-one of which, the Department of Energy, has been born out of just such a reorganization. The tremendous rise in US energy consumption in the past decade or so has been due to an increase in per-capita use rather than to an increase in our population. In his book on Geology, Resources, and Society, H. W. Menard pointed out that the US accounted for 35 percent of the total world energy consumption in 1967; this ranged all the way from only 20-25 percent of world consumption for coal, hydroelectric, and nuclear, up to a high of 64 percent for gas. A liaison committee of the Association of American State Geologists meets regularly with the US Geological Survey and a number of Federal agencies regarding geoscience issues of national scope, thereby bringing the talents of a number of geoscience experts who are scattered around the country to bear on such matters.
