Anyone remember the 1970s? I was born in 1976, but I have studied the Carter era as well as the entire decade to see how screwed up things were becoming before the dawn of Reagan. Anyone remember Carter's great speech on how to help ease the energy crisis? Instead of doing something, like more drilling (imagine if we would have drilled then, or even 10 years agos; we wouldn't be having these 'it won't help us for ten years' discussions, because the oil would now be flowing) Carter told people to turn down their heat in winter and instead put on a sweater. Now, that is really solving the problem, isn't it? He went on to talk about how much that would save if everyone did it.Kind of like Barry today, eh? Well, guess what? Everyone is NOT going to do it. The effite leftists are still going to want their private jets, like the Hollywood crowd. Some people simply need the heat on. However, don't let this fly in the face of recycled Jimmy Carter crap. After all, he was so right he was reelected in a....oh...never mind...
The American Thinker highlights how Obama is not new, transcendent, chic, or even original...he is just regurgitated Carter:
Barack Obama doesn't just talk about conservation, he practices it. In his thinking and proposals on energy, the Illinois senator has expertly recycled Jimmy Carter. Though there may be a difference here or there, the Obama policies are essentially Carter's.
You have doubts? Read through Carter's energy speech from April 1977. In a nationally televised addressed, Carter struck themes that are echoed by Obama today.
- Whereas Jimmy Carter accused the United States of being "the most wasteful nation on earth," Obama is fond of saying that Americans are energy hogs, consuming a quarter of the world's energy while being only three percent of the world's population.
- Carter urged "strict conservation and a transition to "permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power." He spoke about the need to protect the environment.
- Like Obama raising the specter of manmade global warming, Carter had his Chicken Little, too. He conjured up the image of a mini-apocalypse, should Americans not come to grips soon with the energy crisis. In his own words:
"We will feel mounting pressure to plunder the environment. We will have a crash program to build more nuclear plants, strip-mine and burn more coal, and drill more offshore wells than we will need if we begin to conserve now. Inflation will soar, production will go down, people will lose their jobs. Intense competition will build up among nations and among the different regions within our own country.
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If we fail to act soon, we will face an economic, social and political crisis that will threaten our free institutions."
In a similar vein, Barack Obama said this last year, when he unveiled his global warming initiative:
"This is our generation's moment to save future generations from global catastrophe by creating a market for clean-burning fuels that can stop the dangerous transformation of our climate."
The irony is that a portion of Carter's prophecy came to pass during his administration, and led to his eventual defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan. Thanks to his tax and fiscal policies -- not conflicts over energy -- inflation soared, productivity took a hit and unemployment spiraled up. It was the stuff of the "Misery Index."
Carter's prediction that dwindling resources and rising consumption would lead to collapse never came to pass, as anyone living can testify. But here's what skeptical Americans heard from Carter on that long-ago April night:
"World consumption of oil is still going up. If it were possible to keep it rising during the 1970s and 1980s by 5 percent a year as it has in the past, we could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade."
Energy demand has, in fact, continued to climb since Carter's presidency, but so has energy production -- domestically and globally. Exploration, advances in technology, entrepreneurism and market forces have seen to that happy result. And, not incidentally, President Reagan's policies unleashed an economic revival that was as good for the nation's energy sector as it was for other sectors of the economy.
