"The alternative may be a national catastrophe..."

The world now uses about 60 million barrels of oil a day and demand increases each year about 5 percent. This means that just to stay even we need the production of a new Texas every year, an Alaskan North Slope every nine months, or a new Saudi Arabia every three years. Obviously, this cannot continue.

speech on energy policy (see video below). Thirty years later,

Drill, baby, drill.

Carter warned that facing up to the implications of our energy consumption would be the "'moral equivalent of war'— except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not destroy." The alternative, he warned, "may be a national catastrophe."

But this was, in James Howard Kunstler's phrase, a long emergency, and so Carter's warning was set aside and his prescriptions laughed off during the ensuing Reagan/Laffer years.

This week the incumbent president spread an even greater cloud of gloom and doom, and his words sounded more like a threat to acquiesce than an exhortation to act as a nation.

In contrast to Carter, who spoke early and often about energy realities and what the country should do about them, Pres. Bush has only come lately to the realization that his policies and values contributed to the mess in our financial markets. And in contrast to Carter's notion of a long-term national policy backed by united efforts, Bush proposes a financial bail-out to avert catastrophe — a burden imposed on the citizens rather than a sacrifice shouldered.

. Again, it was about energy, but also about a nation losing faith in itself.

We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.

All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem.

Energy will be the immediate test of our ability to unite this nation, and it can also be the standard around which we rally. On the battlefield of energy we can win for our nation a new confidence, and we can seize control again of our common destiny.

We didn't listen then. I wonder how many will hear the call in this election?

Comments

[jdege]

60 mbbl/day, growing at 5%/year, for 30 years?

That'd have been 260 mbbl/day, had Jimmy been right. Clearly things didn't continue the way he had forseen.

The market works, nothing else does.

Scarcity results in higher prices, which results in both increased supply and decreased demand. Which is exactly what has happened, over the last 30 years.

30 years ago, Carter tried to artificially force the development of shale oil. It was an economic disaster, sucking up billions of tax dollars and producing damned little.

Today, shale oil makes economic sense, and if the government would get out of the way we'd see it on the market in large quantities - generating tax revenue, instead of burning through tax subsidies.

As I said. The market works, nothing else does. It doesn't work perfectly, but everything else works worse.

[charlieq]

So the rumors about you taking a job with Henry Paulson are false?

[charlieq]

Carter said such growth of consumption was unsustainable, not that it was going to happen, so that meant we had to change.

As for Carter's syn fuels initiative, which included development of methods for cost-effective extraction of oil from shale, it's true it didn't have the effect Carter hoped — and many more now wish had happened, since we're still not ready to accomplish that 30 years later.

The free market itself took a big swing at it back in the early '80s and missed, with the oil companies pulling their development out of western Colorado when those "free market" countries in the middle east decided to start producing more oil and drove down the price. Pulling the plug on energy development had dire consequences for the local economy and set back efforts to develop synthetic fuels and alternatives like shale. I think we'd all agree it would be good to be further along on these.

Generally, I'm with you on free markets, Jeff, except at the margins. They don't do such a good job with funding long range research, and they have a tendency to ride the pony until it's dead and then stick taxpayers with the bill. From buffalo hats to burning rivers to illegal immigration to mortgage-backed securities, we have ample evidence of how well the free market works once it really gets rolling.

Which is just fine if you're in the middle of the cycle, or if you're talking about small business. But "market correction" is what a guy with a golden parachute calls ruin.

Since Carter, the nation's (and world's) industry has become much more financialized and short-term in its outlook.

Exxon, Williams and BP are trying to be responsible and think long term, but I don't believe big oil and gun-shy financial markets are going to lead America to greater energy independence any time soon.