I’m old enough to remember the 1973 Middle East oil embargo and the long lines at gas stations. So is our current president. The lesson was clear: We needed to end our dependence on the oil from that region.
The fallout included U.S. automakers’ loss of significant market share to Japanese companies, which were producing cars that could go many more miles on a gallon of gas than most of the ones made by Ford, GM, and Chrysler.
That oil shock did lead to some progress. "Solar, wind, and nuclear are children of the 1970s oil shocks — with growth driven by security, not environmentalism," the Carlyle Group's Jeff Currie and Admiral James Stavridis, the former NATO commander, wrote recently. And, as Rebecca Elliott noted in a news analysis in The New York Times, our fuel-economy standards are “an enduring legacy” of the embargo.
That progress was bolstered by the developing scientific consensus that fossil fuels were changing our climate and a range of actions taken to address that problem.
Because of efforts to boost energy efficiency and promote renewable energy sources, Americans are more insulated from oil shocks today than decades ago, Francesca Paris noted in The New York Times. “Petroleum makes up a tiny share of electricity generation (less than 1 percent, down from 11 percent in 1980). Oil prices hit consumers on the road most of all, but even there, less so: The country’s cars are more efficient, on average, and a growing share of Americans are driving electric vehicles.”
Yet it’s discouraging that in the half century since the OPEC embargo, the U.S. and other nations remain so vulnerable to what is transpiring today in and around the Strait of Hormuz. As The Times’ Elliott observed: “With oil front and center, it feels almost like revisiting an earlier time, before countries began embracing renewable energy…”
And the need to move away more quickly from reliance on fossil fuels became even clearer with the March 6 publication of a new study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Researchers found that the rate of global warming has nearly doubled over the last decade. As David Gelles reported in The Times, “Many of the consequences of global warming — such as more intense storms, warming oceans and melting glaciers — are arriving faster and more powerfully than many scientists had expected,” David Gelles reported in The Times.
Ben Geman of Axios wrote, “Various analysts and advocates say (the Iran War) could — or at least should — prompt governments and investors to prioritize fuels that don't have to move across oceans.”
But maybe not. "While I agree that oil price spikes could revive interest in renewables, I'll say it again: high prices tend to usher out incumbent politicians faster than they usher in new technologies," ClearView Energy Partner's Kevin Book posted on X.
The politician occupying the Oval Office remains intent on stifling any transition away from fossil fuels, including what he calls “clean, beautiful coal.” With the courts frustrating his efforts to block wind farms off the East Coast, the Trump administration offered to pay nearly $1 billion to TotalEnergies, the French energy company behind two wind farms off New York State and North Carolina, to not proceed with those projects. Total Energies accepted that deal. Not only that, the company committed to investing in natural gas infrastructure in Texas.
Imagine if Congress, back in the mid-1970s, had voted to put a price on carbon. Think how different our sorry history on oil and the Middle East would have been. Wouldn’t it be great if this latest conflict could convince our political leaders that they cannot postpone this sensible step any longer?