When US President George W. Bush suggested that Americans conserve energy Sept. 26, he made liberals smile and conservatives frown.
“We can all pitch in by using-by being better conservers of energy,” he said in Washington, DC, after Hurricane Rita. “I mean, people just need to recognize that the storms have caused disruption and that if they’re able to maybe not drive when they-on a trip that’s not essential, that would be helpful.”
Liberals, who always know how much energy people should use, which is always less than people are using, said Bush should have been saying things like this all along.
Conservatives said he sounded too much like former President Jimmy Carter, who steered his presidency toward the rocks with his June 15, 1979, “crisis of confidence” energy speech.
The Bush-Carter comparison, which has spread like bad ideas in an energy crisis, stretches a point. Bush just said people should think twice about driving. Carter declared martial law on energy markets and asked Americans to believe that solving the energy crisis of his day also would “help us to conquer the crisis of the spirit in our country.”
Americans responded the next year by refusing to reelect him.
So far, Bush has proposed no synthetic fuels boondoggle or “windfall profit” tax. He hasn’t imposed oil-import quotas or asked for authority to mandate conservation and ration gasoline.
In fact, conservation began before Bush recommended it. According to the Energy Information Administration, gasoline consumption fell below year-earlier levels every week in September in a strengthening trend, thanks to price leaps following Hurricane Katrina.
Conservation also was under way when Carter tried to hitch it to the American spirit and for the same reason. Prices were leaping because of the Iranian revolution of 1978 and the dismantling of federal controls.
It would take 15 years for average annual consumption of motor gasoline to climb back to its level of the year before Carter’s gloomy speech.
Then, as now, Americans cut fuel use not because a president invoked sacrifice but because prices encouraged them to. Conservation works best that way.
(Online Sept. 30, 2005; author’s e-mail: [email protected])
