My wife and I were married 26 and a half years ago. It’s been a good marriage. As in any good marriage, full of surprises. One such surprise happened this week. She was working in her files, and offered a look at one item she thought might interest me. It did, and I’d not seen it before.

It’s titled “The Great Gas Crunch – Who is to Blame and Why.” It’s a reprint of an article from the Los Angeles Times, published on Sunday, May 20, 1979. It would have been fun to reprint it here but it’s under copyright and I’d best not try it. But I can talk about it. I think I ought to do that, because the material has present relevance.

Typically, the fuel crises of the ‘70s occurred in specific areas only. I recall specifically one such ‘Crisis” in which the oil companies involved in the Prudhoe Bay development in Alaska were unhappy about a congressional proposal to install an Alaska-Illinois pipeline. They preferred a pipeline to southern Alaska, and to use tankers from there. Access to Japanese ports was a factor. A gas crunch developed in Washington, D.C. and Denver, Colorado for a while. When Congress approved the pipeline to the tanker port the gas crunch went away.

But this one was in California (Oregon and Washington were unaffected. I lived in southern Utah at the time and it wasn’t noticed there.) The Iranian revolution had occurred and Iran was not shipping oil as a result. There was a great deal of tension – you may recall that Iranians had overrun the American Embassy and were holding a large number of diplomats hostage. (For what it’s worth, I had a friend at the time from Iran. Bijan got his mother and sister into the U.S., but his father refused to immigrate. Dad was a general and had been in charge of the Iranian secret police for a period under the Shah, said that they did not mistreat prisoners under his watch, and he remained in Iran to protect his honor. He was the 200th victim of the Ayatollah’s firing squads. Again for what it’s worth, Bijan said the practice of torturing prisoners began at the instigation of U.S. advisors (Chicago cops) under a subsequent commander of the police. What was Bijan doing in southern Utah? Going to college there. Looked like home, he said. Same reason I was there. Looked like home to me, too. Physically, it suited. Socially was another matter.)

Why was the crunch particular to California? Some felt it had to do with Governor Jerry Brown – “Moonbeam” to his GOP detractors. Oil companies had some reasons of their own. California and Alaskan oil was inferior to the “sweet crude” of the Mideast – sweet being a lighter crude that contains a higher ratio of higher volatility compounds such as gasoline and octane, which, you perhaps remember, contain fewer carbon atoms at the molecular level.

But perhaps the truth had more to do with the shutdown, during the summer driving seasons, of refineries for “maintenance”.How was it to live in this “Crisis?” Let me quote the Times. “Throughout the major population centers of Northern and Southern California, people wanting gasoline found themselves mired in lines stretching for blocks, sometimes for a mile or more.”

Meanwhile, as specified in the Times article, the corporate world had been forewarned. Quoting again: “Months before motorists began topping off their tanks, business large and small rushed to stock up on gasoline and other fuel in anticipation of higher prices and lower supplies. These commercial purchasers avoid the word hoarding, but whatever it is called, the surge in stockpiling drained millions of gallons from the system.”

The outlook, in 1979? “The answer, in a nutshell, is not rosy , either for California or for the rest of the nation.” That’s another quote. They noted the runup in prices from 66 cents to 84 cents. Way she goes.

In 1980 Ronald Reagan announced ‘morning in America’. We forgot about energy problems and enjoyed the good life. We converted from the subcompacts that became popular during the ‘70s and began driving SUVs, heavily promoted on television.

And here we are, fat, dumb, but somehow not quite happy. And with another crisis looming. But the crisis is born of very different things this time, neither political nor commercial. Petroleum is the product of previous eras of high atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and conditions conducive to limiting the decomposition of organisms. Fossil fuels are limited in quantity and their uses have dangerous consequences. Which we seem dedicated to proving. So much for history. But this time a different ending. No more sunshine, America. Unless we create a new economy, based on fuel sources divorced from fossil fuels.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 30th, 2007 at 7:19 am and is filed under Energy Future, Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.