Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
And so another crack had emerged in the foundations of what
seemed to be an increasingly unpredictable and dangerous world. Soon
Americans found themselves waiting in long lines at gas stations; when
they reached the pumps, their reward was record prices for fuel. h e
economy quickly tipped into recession; it remained in the doldrums for
a decade. h
is was a searing moment for most Americans. h
ere was
something deeply wrong with what was going on with oil.
People immediately looked for someone to blame. Western oil com-
panies and the federal government saw the brunt of the opprobrium,
but no one, from Saudi sheiks to California environmentalists, escaped
the public wrath.
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President Nixon, desperate to appear in control,
announced a bold endeavor: by the end of the decade, the United States
would achieve self-sui ciency through a mix of conservation, increased
production, and domestic alternatives to oil.
Today that pronouncement is usually recounted as an example of
either l iml am or hubris; by 1980, the United States was importing far
more oil than in 1973. But despite falling short of Nixon's lot y goals,
the system actually did respond. Two lasting changes that would help
the United States over the next decade eventually emerged, though nei-
ther was without controversy.
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h e i rst was the opening of the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline, a ten-bil-
lion-dollar, two-million-barrel-a-day behemoth running from Prudhoe
Bay on the North Slope of Alaska to the Pacii c port of Valdez. h e
pipeline had been on the table before the energy crisis but stalled in
the face of hostility to its construction from environmental and Native
American groups. h e oil shock quickly broke down the opposition,
and on November 16, 1973, Nixon signed broadly supported legisla-
tion moving the pipeline forward. By the end of the 1970s, it would
allow previously landlocked oil to l ow to the lower forty-eight states,
reversing the earlier decline in U.S. crude production. American output
bot omed out in 1976, and U.S. production would remain above its
1976 level until 1989.
h e second bat le came a year at er the pipeline went into service.
American oil consumption was soaring, and legislators were deter-
mined to stop that through the i rst-ever fuel economy standards for
cars and light trucks. Automobile companies and their workers were
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