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?
