Moral from 1970s energy crisis forgotten today

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Moral from 1970s energy crisis forgotten today

By HOWARD TROXLER

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 21, 2001

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The energy crisis of the 1970s shocked Americans and changed our culture. The energy crisis of the 1970s shocked Americans and changed our culture.

A consumer nation that always had everything it wanted suddenly had to stand in line for rationed gasoline. Whether you could buy gas depended on whether your license tag ended with an odd or even number.

President Carter went on television to tell us that we should be using less energy. He wore cardigan sweaters and told us to keep the house colder in winter and hotter in summer.

The psychological effect was as important as the physical. Pessimism crept into our collective consciousness. In the 1970s, we talked a lot about running out of things -- coal, oil and other fossil fuels. Food. Water. Even room on the planet. A whole genre of films like Soylent Green (1973) played on those fears.

The environmental movement grafted itself on top of 1960s protests and became the activism of the 1970s. It was a decade of whole-earth-ness, and of compost piles. It gave us recycling and Earth Day.

We put more money (not tons, but more) into solar power. We built windmills. We re-engineered our buildings, our automobiles, and even our gasoline. Clever farmers in Iowa pushed an extra use for their corn and we got gasohol. Ex-hippies built homes half-buried in the ground for coolness or well-windowed for warmth.

This was a quarter-century ago.

Here is a striking comparison. Our last "energy crisis" is as far ago in the past as the end of World War II was when the 1970s opened. Tell your kids or grandkids today about having to stand in gas lines, and you are sounding just like your Depression-era parents or grandparents telling hard-times stories to you.

After the 1970s, we retained some of the energy-crisis values. We at least paid lip service to good gas mileage (until the advent of SUVs, anyway). We valued energy efficiency in buildings, if only for the practical reason that it gave us cheaper bills.

We remain more likely to recycle. We are less likely to throw entire bags of garbage out the car window. We have switched entirely to unleaded gas.

But for the most part, we have forgotten the moral of the story.

The energy "crisis" of the 1970s turned out to be basically a mismatch between demand and supply. Afterward we found plenty more fossil-fuel reserves. The sense of urgency of the 1970s began to fade away. So did money for solar and wind power.

Today, we are relying on pretty much the same energy sources as always: We dig or pump things out of the ground, and we burn them.

Now energy is returning to the news. Once again, short-term problems (electric generation in California and higher gasoline prices nationwide) take on the appearance of a systemic "crisis" that needs to be addressed.

But this time, our answer is different. Politicians of both parties are taking great pains to avoid any mention of sacrifice or hardship or even changing our personal habits.

Last week, President Bush and Vice President Cheney unveiled a new national energy policy with more than 100 recommendations. The overall thrust of the policy is yet more reliance on fossil fuels. Conservation and alternative energy sources get lip service, with no specific goals at all.

Cheney made no bones about the administration's philosophy when he recently called conservation a mere "personal virtue," and said no serious person could consider conservation to be the main thrust of an energy policy.

Maybe not. But there is zero doubt in my mind that one day our descendants will consider us as just backward because of our use of fossil fuels as we consider those "doctors" who used leeches and bloodletting in the Middle Ages.

- You can reach Howard Troxler at (727) 893-8505 or at troxler@sptimes.com.

http://www.sptimes.com/News/052101/Columns/Moral_from_1970s_ener.shtml

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), May 21, 2001

Answers

Apparently the writer of this piece hasn't stayed up with the times. The supposed fossil fuels threat to the environment is nothing like it was in the 1970s. Technology has advanced since then to make these relatively clean burning substances.

With such an abundance, especially of coal and natural gas, why shouldn't these be used?

-- Billiver (billiver@aol.com), May 21, 2001.


The original post is interesting but Conservation is not only a "good thing" but essential!

It should come as no surprise that we are dependant on fossil fuels for our current western way of life. Many people however, don't think about just how dependant we actually are.

Try this little experiment:

Look around you and count all the things that have been moved, constructed or effected by either Diesel fuel or gasoline, plastics or chemicals.

Now imagine what would happen to our society IF NONE OF THIS STUFF WAS AVAILABLE! Scary, huh?

Impossible you say?

Unfortunately it is not only possible but inevitable. There is only so much crude oil and natural gas on earth. We have already used almost half of the expected global petroleum endowment. Not only that, but we have done it in less than 200 years from the time we first figured out that we could replace whale oil and coal oil with petroleum.

A geologist named M. King Hubbert discovered back in the 60's that, once you have produced about half of a region's reserves of petroleum, the production rate inevitably declines. He accurately predicted a peak for the production of crude oil in the lower 48 states of the U.S. to be around 1970 or so. In fact, if it hadn't been for Prudoe Bay in Alaska the U.S. rates would have declined even faster.

You could say that since half of the reserves are left there should be nothing to worry about.

That is correct, except for a little thing called supply/demand.

Current estimates of the _growth_ in world oil consumption (ie demand) are about 3% per year!

We currently consume 77 Million Barrels of oil PER DAY! That is the equivalent of all the water that flows over Niagara Falls each day. If we have produced half of the global reserves then according to Hubberts analysis WE CANNOT INCREASE THE OVERALL PRODUCTION RATE AT ALL!

The only producing countries with excess capacity today are Saudi Arabia and Iraq. All other producing regions are in decline or shortly will be.

The price of oil will continue to climb from the moment that supply can't keep up with demand.

THAT MOMENT IS NOW!

Conservation while unpleasant is a necessary companion for the search for alternatives and environmentally safe additional supplies.

WE HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO CONSERVE!

For more information check out: http://www.hubbertpeak.com/ http://www.wri.org/wri/climate/jm_oil_001.html http://www.dieoff.com/page1.htm Warning: The last site is fairly grim but has excellant information.

-- Kevin (kevijeps@telusplanet.net), May 22, 2001.


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