Reason #73: Politicians Keep Pushing the Oil Habit

For decades now, our government has failed to implement a cohesive energy policy to effectively reduce our dependence upon foreign oil. Because of this government failure we’ve got the current war in Iraq. Have we ever even tried to get off oil? Looking back through our national history, we find that a few leaders have made some half-assed attempts to get Americans to kick the fossil habit, and a few others have even taken firm and admirable stances. But time and again all real progress has been stymied by political bickering or by the influence of private interests in Washington. So our oil addiction shamelessly continues, and keeps up hard at work waving our guns to secure our “economic interests” in the Middle East.

Back in 1973, when the U.S. first experienced a serious energy crisis, President Nixon took the U.S. dollar off the gold standard. The dollar value went into a nosedive, and this caused OPEC to conclude we weren’t very credit-worthy, so they used an embargo to block oil exports to America. With the drop in supply, American oil prices soared. The timing couldn’t have been worse, because the United States also happened to be in the midst of a national recession.

The Federal government tried to deal with the problem in a few different ways. They set U.S. highway speed limits to fifty-five miles per hour, which is the most energy-efficient rate of travel for most cars. They instituted year-round daylight savings, which kept us from using too much electricity because our lights didn’t have to be on so long.

In 1974, new president Gerald Ford said to America, “Don’t be fuelish”-a little silly, but something we ought to be thinking about today. Until recently, the concept of conservation and fuel efficiency went completely out the window. The good news is private enterprise is now coming up with all manner of alternate energy schemes, some of which have great potential. But the bad news is our government is still mired in the misguided policies of the past. Politicians continue to pump subsidies into phony solutions rather than doing the one thing we must do to solve our energy problems: another “Manhattan Project” scale initiative.

NEXT: Reason #74: Unleaded CAFE