Carter had a powerful energy idea

Thirty years ago this month, a solemn Jimmy Carter sat behind the historic Resolute desk in the Oval Office to announce to a prime-time national television audience his new comprehensive energy plan. In the most memorable line of the evening, the president declared the challenge of energy “the moral equivalent of war.”

The Carter energy strategy was both praised for its ambition (the written version had 113 parts) and derided for its interventionism — critics tried to brand it with the acronym MEOW.


Contrary to common mythology, Carter was far from a lonely voice calling for strenuous action. After the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74, both of his predecessors, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, called energy the nation’s top priority and set an ambitious goal for “energy independence” (eliminating reliance on foreign oil by 1980, no less).

New Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, D-Mass., gave energy such high priority that he immediately took the unprecedented step of establishing an omnibus committee headed by Rep. Thomas “Lud” Ashley, D-Ohio, to shepherd the complex Carter plan quickly through the House. Congress scuttled Carter’s recommended gasoline tax, and a bitter divide over natural gas deregulation in the Senate stalled the whole energy package for a year and a half. But with considerable support on both sides of the aisle, most of his plan did become law.

San Francisco Chronicle