Jimmy Carter Was Right, 1/24/2007 Edition
Or: Conservation--No Longer Just A "Personal Virtue"?
So, it seems that Mr. Bush is going to call for us to decrease our oil consumption. Let me be the first to say it: way to go, W. A capital idea. I'm absolutely behind him on this.
I hope it's not churlish to point out that this was also a good idea in 1978. In fact, it was even a much better idea in '78. If we'd have listened to dopey old doom-n-gloom Carter back then we would be in far less hot water than we are today.
But, anyway, that's not the point. The point is that W's getting this one right. Good for him.
Or: Conservation--No Longer Just A "Personal Virtue"?
So, it seems that Mr. Bush is going to call for us to decrease our oil consumption. Let me be the first to say it: way to go, W. A capital idea. I'm absolutely behind him on this.
I hope it's not churlish to point out that this was also a good idea in 1978. In fact, it was even a much better idea in '78. If we'd have listened to dopey old doom-n-gloom Carter back then we would be in far less hot water than we are today.
But, anyway, that's not the point. The point is that W's getting this one right. Good for him.
posted by Winston Smith at
3:28 PM
19 Comments:
Time magazine, 1979.
Highlights:
The common view abroad was that the President omitted the two key elements: decontrol of U.S. crude oil prices so that domestic gasoline and heating fuel prices would rise to world levels (Americans still pay less than one half as much for gasoline and fuel oil as Europeans) and an emphasis on expanding nuclear energy.
(Reagan eventually deregulated American energy prices. Carter also put in a windfall profits tax, domestic production shrank in reaction, and dependence on foreign oil increased. Nuclear, well, it is what it isn't.)
...and this gem:
Added one Milan trader: "When Carter speaks, the dollar plummets."
I really don't mean to beat up on Carter, but whenever I take a closer look through the present fog of memory and revisionism, it's even worse than I thought.
Let's not forget that Carter like, totally hates jews, too.
Here in Los Angeles, I see liberal platitudes and Gore or Kerry stickers frequently on SUVs, which gives me a chuckle myself.
The Time article, a bit of a time capsule was interesting to me for several reasons:
---During a global economic meltdown, the European elite was hostile to the US and its president. (Even Maggie Thatcher was snarky about our energy use.) The European elite is always hostile to the US and its president, it seems.
---The press, in this case Time, was entirely unsympathetic to the powers that be, in this case a Democrat president. Not a word in Carter's defense.
Interesting to those like me who read article after article against Bush these days and complain the other side of the story isn't told.
I think we're right, but it may be more the nature of the press than its politics, altho they are measurably liberal. Gives me, and all of us, I reckon, one word of caution---don't believe everything you read in the papers. Carter's energy policy couldn't have been as completely bad as the article indicates.
---The report of shuffles in the Carter administration does indicate that his presidency was foundering with still 2 years left to run, before the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Seems Carter had stuck his foot in it early and often.
I have, per St. Jimmy, a sweater on right now and the thermostat set to 67. But every once in awhile, your feet get cold and you feel you're coming down with something, and you just gotta say, screw it, I'm cranking it up to 70.
I mean, I'm an American, dammit, and this is the greatest country in the history of the earth, and I'm gonna enjoy it.
Ah, Tom, you just don't like sticking to the point, do ya?
The fact that Carter's policies didn't *achieve* energy independence or freedom from ME oil is irrelevant. The fact that that was the GOAL of those policies is the point. He didn't get all the policies in place exactly right to do the thing that he knew had to be done.
But he DID know what had to be done, your side DID sneer at him and succeed in replacing him with a moron who just smiled dopily and said that everything was gonna be just fine, and, now, 30 years later, even your side has to admit that you were wrong and he was right.
Everything else is just sophistical smokescreen to keep from doing the unthinkable--admitting that conservatives were wrong....
And here even I am more and more tempted to add "yet again".
I dunno if the facts bear that out. Nixon called for energy independence in January, 1974 and Ford put out a huge plan himself, which I ran across in the Daily Kos archives of all places.
Whether Carter was laughable in declaring it the "moral equivalent of war" is another story. The reason for energy independence back then was to avoid economic disruption. That Reagan didn't see it that way is understandable, since oil went down to $11 a barrel or so.
Looking at energy independence in 2007 is a different matter because of Islamism and to a lesser degree, Hugo Chavez. Oil is now political, not merely economic.
"Oil is now political, not merely economic."
Yeah, that's a new phenomenon. OAPEC oil embargo, anyone?
BTW, your comment that "Oil is now political, not merely economic" actually proves Winston's point. The deep embedding of energy in our economy, and it's singular satisfaction by oil (an economic distortion), makes it possible for it to be a political weapon in the first place.
If you take away the economic distortion, you take away oil's utility as a political tool.
I'm confused...so let me try to make my point more clearly.
I wasn't denying that there might be Republican presidents who advocated conservation and energy independence.
I'm just pointing out that conservatives ridicule(d) Carter for advocating those things.
So, even if Nixon did so too, I don't see how it affects the point. Good fer Nixon, then in that regard, sez me.
The Carter administration vs. the Democratic senate over energy. Scarcely a conservative bogeyman to be found. Very instructive article, Democrats charging the (Democrat) administration with all sorts of dirty pool.
I really don't remember anything about the issue---poking through the archives, and 1977 Time magazine are particularly probative here---always yields surprises.
To politics vs. economics---OPEC wasn't the political factor (Islamism) it is now. One might say that energy is indeed the moral equivalent of war in 2007, but I can't see it in the 1970s. Few others did at that time either. Carter saw it as a moral issue as usual, and scolded the American people, as was also his custom.
As for conservatives "ridiculing" Carter, if it were only possible to look at the actual reasons why conservatives might disagree--- not out of partisanship or greed or evil, but in the belief that market forces would raise the price of energy, and conservation and innovation would necessarily follow.
The Manhattan Project ideal isn't foolproof---Carter put billions into extracting energy from shale oil, and critics are fond of pointing out not a single kilowatt was generated. There were also fees and taxes which were anti-growth and inhibited production.
And Carter's scoldings were less than useless.
Just because it wasn't an exact analog for the politics that we have now doesn't mean that the economics didn't make the political blackmail possible all the same.
The oil embargo was explicitly to punish the West for support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War. And we should support them again if it comes to it.
The point, then, and still, is that weaning ourselves from oil dependency, as Carter (and others) foresaw, would make the path to morality and justice in foreign policy that much more feasible, and less painful to Americans.
Maybe he wasn't the best salesman in the world, but he was right.
Not to mention, that, though highly counterfactual, it's possible that much of the nasty Iraq/Iran proxy support, bases in Saudi Arabia etc. might have been obviated with a breakthrough in alternative energy.
Those complications have provided much fodder for the Bin Ladens of the world to use in their brainwashing programs. Islamism still might have developed, but it also might not have gotten quite the toehold it has at this point.
The conclusion really is that a lack of oil dependency makes for a hell of a lot more clarity in international relations, particularly in the ME.
An amusing thought, that Jimmy Carter wanted energy independence so the US could have more freedom to back Israel.
(I know you didn't mean it that way, but that's the end result.)
Coincidentally, economist Ben Zycher is a contributor at my groupblog:
Contrary to what many noneconomists believe, the 1973 price increase was not caused by the oil "embargo" (refusal to sell) directed at the United States and the Netherlands that year by the Arab members of OPEC. Instead, OPEC reduced its production of crude oil, thus raising world oil prices substantially. The embargo against the United States and the Netherlands had no effect whatever: both nations were able to obtain oil at the same prices as all other nations. The failure of this selective embargo was predictable. Oil is a fungible commodity that can easily be resold among buyers. Therefore, sellers who try to deny oil to buyer A will find other buyers purchasing more oil, some of which will be resold by them to buyer A. "
As a matter of historical record, OPEC started its embargo in October, 1973, and the embargo ended by February 1974. By 1981, OPEC was no longer the dominant player in oil, and its unity had fractured.
The lasting effect (coincidence?), however, is that Europe apparently abandoned its traditional support for Israel and has leaned anti-Israel ever since.
It makes no difference whatsoever that OPEC couldn't in actual practice selectively punish the west because oil is a fungible resource. They still managed to raise worldwide prices, didn't they? And they can do so now, despite your claim that they're no longer "the dominant player in oil". The percentage of world output they account for is 40% and rising, so they can and do still affect prices, since demand is highly inelastic.
Which brings us back again to the point that, whatever Carter or anybody else specifically thought freedom from oil dependency would allow us to do, it removes the possibility for economic blackmail. And your argument that the embargo soured Europe somewhat on support of Israel is also an argument for energy independence. They've certainly instituted more onerous taxes on gasoline in an effort to curtail use and fund alternatives. I don't think they're right, but you try paying $6.00 a gallon for a while.
The rest of Dr. Zycher's article has a response: OPEC has never maintained unity.
I'd add we're seeing another phenomenon as well lately: since many OPEC types rely almost exclusively on oil revenues to run their countries (and stay in power), they're as addicted to western dollars as we are to their oil, a sort of mutual hostage situation. (I suspect if Hugo Chavez could bring America to its knees by holding out, he would. However, he'd be more likely to suffer than the US.)
The 1973 embargo put a chill in the west's spine, and of course it could happen again. But it also appears it may have been a one-off.
Whether you agree or not with the "conservative" skepticism toward the issue, it's founded on principle and fact. It's not all about driving SUVs or laughing at liberals.
You're actually looking at it backwards. The mutual dependency is bad for both parties. Weaning ourselves from oil dependency helps us and helps oil producers by forcing them to diversify their economies.
A high price for oil even confers a patina of legitimacy on Iran's putative wish to pursue nuclear energy; it makes economic sense to not consume a precious resource that you can otherwise sell for cash.
I'm actually sympathetic to the pressure to conform to political realities - it's very hard to work around a highly embedded demand for cheap energy; what Carter and the others (Ford among them) were attempting to do was change the dynamics of the politics by removing or mitigating that problem.
Sometimes, even when thinking realpolitik, a nation doesn't even correctly perceive its own interests.
I'm compelled to agree, anonymous, on your first and last. That would be the underlying principle and goal.
The question of how to achieve it, whether by technocracy or by Adam Smith's invisible hand, focuses our inquiry.
But as we fancy ourselves free thinkers, let us challenge the conventional wisdom of the press, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and lately, Dubya, that energy independence is necessary or even valuable.
Perhaps it's a chimera, and interconnectedness with the oil-rich Arab/Muslim world, not to mention Hugo Chavez, keeps us all honest.
And BTW, anonymous---I've been musing over your last. If the economies of totalitarian or near-totalitarian Venezuela, Iran, and Saudi Arabia were forced by circumstances to diversify their economies, according to "neo-liberal" political/economic theory (Hayek, what have you), they would liberalize and democratize from the bottom up.
The experiment is underway in China even as we type.
A notion beyond the purview of this blog, I think, but a worthy one nonetheless. Thanks for the spark. That's why I hang around here.
So, in the end, Carter WAS right.
Which is where we started.
Yes, and in case you saw the movie SYRIANA, that's what Matt Damon's character was trying to convince the Sheik of.
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