Philadelphia Inquirer: Oil woes were foreseen

Thu, Jul. 31, 2008

Oil woes were foreseen
Jimmy Carter warned that our addiction would one day threaten national security.

By Harry K. Schwartz

If only we had listened to Jimmy Carter.

Flash back to 1973. Motorists were lined up for blocks at gas stations thanks to an oil embargo in the Middle East. Americans were frustrated and angry. The crisis passed, but the problem did not go away.

In April 1977, newly elected President Carter told the nation, "The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly."

Carter ordered a government-wide review to determine how best to marshal the tools of the government to hasten the day when solar and renewable sources of energy would become our primary energy sources.

In 1979 he issued a Presidential Message to the Congress, charting a path to increased reliance on solar energy, renewable resources and conservation, and setting a goal: 20 percent of our energy needs were to be met by solar and renewable resources by the year 2000.

If we let cheap oil lull us into inactivity, Carter warned, "we could endanger our freedom as a sovereign nation to act in foreign affairs." He saw our oil addiction as a threat to our national security, and he urged the nation to break free of it.

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We are paying about $4 a gallon for gasoline. We have fought two wars in the Middle East. Whatever justifications may be given, one may wonder what national interest would have required those wars if we had not needed the oil.

And we have spawned a deadly terrorist organization - al-Qaeda - by our very presence in Saudi Arabia.

Thirty years ago, Carter warned us that if we failed to act to achieve energy independence, we could endanger our freedom as a sovereign nation.

But we didn't listen.