It was late 1973, and I had just gotten back from overseas where I had been employed as a public relations man for the nuclear power industry. Out of work but with a nice stash in the bank, I was able to buy a brand-spanking new VW beetle, a small sailboat, and take my time looking for a job that was more suited to my skills and interests. The PR biz had left me with a good understanding of the energy/environmental industry, and a sour taste in my mouth. I was determined to use my technical skills in some environmental field, which I felt would be more acceptable to me, both professionally and morally. It was the 70s and I was young, (26) and still idealistic. “Ecology” was the new buzzword.
I wanted to make some money, and not work too hard to get it, and I wanted to have fun doing it, too. But I also wanted to do something I was proud of, something that helped the world, not added to its problems. I figured my best bet was to take advantage of my technical education and start at the bottom in some company working in the environmental field. I would learn an industry from the ground up, while I still had time and resources, before the demands of being a grown-up caught up with me. Eventually I found what I was looking for, a job in the airphoto mapping industry, work involved in the assessment and management of earth resources through remote sensing and cartographic techniques. I started off as a minimum-wage trainee, I spent the rest of my life working in that area.
But you already know all that, I’ve bored you with my resume before. This post is about something else, but the nature of my work and my life experience and interests do relate to it. My new job was at a small airport in central Florida, about 35 miles from where I lived in Tampa. It was right off the Interstate, and I could make the run in a half hour, which meant I would burn a little over two gallons of fuel every day, just commuting. The beetle has a 10 gallon tank, so If I filled up Sunday night, I could run out of gas driving home on a Friday afternoon if I didn’t fill up in between.
There was trouble in the Middle East, and the energy crisis started in October, ’73. It was going full bore by February when I started my new job. Gas prices went way up, but that was manageable. I drove a fuel-efficient car. The problem was shortages. There was rationing, and there were long lines at the gas stations, when you could find one that was open. I had to commute 70 miles a day, and rationing was done by the last digit on your licence plate–odd or even, it had to match the date. So if I filled up Monday morning, by Wednesday evening I had to find a fill-up, because Thursday was no-gas for me. And it wasn’t easy to find a gas station open after working hours any day of the week, anywhere. Needless to say, keeping the beetle fed consumed a lot of effort and forethought. This went on for months until things settled down in the Mid East.
The energy shock of the 70s had a profound effect on the US economy, and a subtle, but no less profound effect on the American psyche. I had always remembered my old immigrant relatives sagely rubbing their chins and remarking how “the Americans have never experienced real hunger, they won’t be able to handle it”. This wasn’t exactly true, we know now that hunger has never been completely wiped out in this country, and it was far from uncommon during the Depression years. But still, America has always been blessed with an abundance of food, and has usually done a good job of feeding its citizens. But it wasn’t the famine my elders prophesied, but the gas shortage that shook us to the core. Being without gas was like going without food. We all got a taste of how bad it might get during those days. We never saw it coming, and those who lived through it will never forget it.
Of course, my radical hippy friends and I spent a lot of time talking and thinking about it. We understood this shortage was the result of complex political and economic events playing out on an international scale–it wasn’t a Capitalist conspiracy carried out to corner the market and raise prices. But regardless of the reasons, there were shortages, and prices did go up. Maybe it wasn’t a conspiracy of villains, but obviously our leaders, in government and business, had allowed, even encouraged, us to burn away our petroleum in less than a generation. The crisis had not been anticipated, and we were not ready for it. We should have seen it coming. Hell, I should have seen it coming. I had just recently worked in the energy industry. Nuclear power was supposed to be in place by the end of the century when the oil finally ran out. Nobody told me some damn A-rab could make a phone call and I was waiting for gas, watching fist-fights in the line ahead of me.
My cousin Robert the Red warned me sternly: “They did it to gas. You watch. Next time, they’ll do it to food, people will go hungry. Americans can’t handle an empty tank, no way they can handle an empty stomach. There will be fighting in the streets.”
Of course, he was mistaken. The much-feared food shortage never came. When it finally came, a generation later, it wasn’t food. It was real estate. The middle class got wiped out when the wealth they had invested in housing was suddenly cut in half. People not only lost their homes, they lost the equity in their homes. And of course, they’ve been doing it to health care, gradually, all along. There were also other slow-motion shortages creeping up on us, gradual and stealthy: jobs, salaries, pensions, benefits.
I think we can clearly see the next one shaping up: education. During the fuel shortages of the 70s I went to graduate school, because it was cheap at a state school. With only a blue-collar job I could still afford to get my Master’s, even though I had used up all my GI Bill. No way that can happen now. And most folks can’t send their kids to college unless they accumulate enormous debt.
They (just who are “they”, anyway?) cut off the gas, then came the housing crash, next health care, then student loans and all the rest. Can food be far behind? Or will they come up with something totally unexpected?