What We Learned From the Oil Crisis of 1973: A 30-Year Retrospective

Abstract

Thirty years ago, the Arab Oil Embargo caused us to stop taking gasoline for granted and caused the author to start teaching students about the importance of energy in our lives. This retrospective shows the same general patterns discerned from a 20-year retrospective a decade ago: a sharp decrease in energy use following each of the two energy crises of the 1970s and a decline in the rate at which energy use increased in the years following. Yet the United States has made little progress to wean itself from its fossil fuels energy diet, and there is little expectation that this will change in the next 50 years.