Richard Nixon, not enviros, was responsible for meddling in energy usage
Rob Bradley, an erstwhile libertarian turned energy industry spokesman – and thus no friend of enviro-fascists (or libertarian critics like me) – provides a useful reminder of the history of government interference in energy (though he omits the Vietnam War and the role of gross pollution problems).
Below are excerpts from Bradley’s May 2 post at his Big Oil and Big Coal cheerleading blog, ‘Master Resource’ (emphasis added):
Remembering the Birth of Conservationism (Part I: President Nixon’s price controls, not Arab OPEC, produced energy crisis, demand-side politicization)
The oil crisis, contrary to popular remembrance, did not begin with the Arab Embargo of October 1973. It began with petroleum product shortages that arose in late 1972 when price controls became constraining. In February 1973, Senate hearings on fuel shortages … Expert testimony was heard about how 18 months of price controls were at the root of the supply shortfall, as were the lingering constraints of an earlier federal program designed to help the domestic industry in a time of oil surplus, the Mandatory Oil Import Program.
The U.S. Senate convened a meeting on energy conservation, identified as “the first congressional hearings to be devoted to this subject.” Demand was now decoupled from supply, creating an industry of thought, opinion, and passion as to what demand should be and what role government should play to correct oil-market problems. The game was rigged thanks to Richard Nixon, whose original 90-day freeze would be but the first of five price-control phases and the starting point for more than seven years of price-and-allocation regulation under the Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act of 1973 (EPAA).
The March 1973 hearings attracted the first wave of energy conservationists and environmentalists from organizations such as the Environmental Defense Fund, Friends of the Earth, and the Sierra Club.
Conservationism (as versus self-interested conservation) would now have a life of its own. Energy usage was a per se bad. Less was better. Energy appliances and motorized transportation would never be the same after President Nixon’s ill-fated action of wage and price controls.
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