[pea-jay]

Since I did not exist for the first energy crisis in 1973 and was barely 5 for the second one in 1979ish, all of my references of experience were from books. My question is to those old enough to remember,

What was it like for you? What happened in your part of the world? Did you wait in gas lines? Wear a Wip Inflation Now button? Did you lose your job. And so on. I would imagine in the early phase of peak oil, the peak would resembel the 1970s shocks. Now I know those were political in nature and peak oil is geologic in nature but some experiences may be similar to start with.

[bart]

It's funny. I lived through it, but the rise in gas prices made absolutely no impression on me. I think that we could only buy gas every other day (odd-numbered license plates one day, even-numbered the next). People were buying economy cars.

The war in Vietnam, the draft, and politics seemed much more on people's minds in 1973.

In 1979, I got around by bicycle, so gas was a moot point. I went to Guatemala, and any oil problems in the US seemed trivial in comparison to the civil war the Guatemalans were going through.

In general, I was much more absorbed with my own problems and personal dramas than in oil. Also, when you're young, you get used to anything.

-bart

[JR]

I was in school at the time...graduated high school in 1982. So, I don't remember a whole lot since I wasn't driving and more worried about how I dressed and my grades, etc.

But, I do rememeber a surge in interest for alternatives. Namely Gasahol. Many gas stations in the state began installing one pump that would sell gasahol. I don't remember how many cars actually were around to use it, I never knew anyone who had one. And when the gas crisis was over, those pumps disappeared as well.


Jodi

[mmm]

I can remember when I was in the 6th grade in the early 80's, our "gifted and talented" program had a machine with a lot of little red digital readout screens that would allow you to run a simulation of the world over time showing population, supplies of key resources, and standard of living expressed as "energy slaves". You would have your simulated world living at a standard of living of hundreds of energy slaves. You could fiddle with a few key inputs on the machine and then the simulation would run year by year. Eventually you pretty much always got to a massive population run-up, leading to a crash as the resources were depleted.

Our little group of 12-year-olds already knew then that the writing was on the wall.

[Petro]

I was in my early teens at the time, living in rural Pennsylvania. The impact of gasoline prices, etc., was not directly apparent to me except as wathced from the television. You don't encounter the urban form of drama with gas queues etc., in the country. What did impact us directly, was the fact that my family had just built a new home, and it was heated by oil. Thinking ourselves clever we buried a 1k USA/Gal tank as to hold the oil. We were barely able to afford to have it filled 50%. Thankfully the new home was equiped with fireplaces, and they were used extensively that (the hardest), winter. I was not of driving age at the time, and cannot remember the impact gas prices had directly on my family, or neighbors. Farmers tend to store gasoline for the operation of their equipment--perhaps this, although I'm not sure, created a buffer of sorts. I do remember that portable in-home heaters ; effecient, kerosine fuled, became all the rage as people were unable to afforde expensive central-style oil burners to heat their homes. I do have family still in that 'neck of the woods', and almost all supplement their main source of heating with efficient coal and wood-burning heaters. Most remember how hard those winters were.

[pup55]

Let me tell you about the '70's.

Just about this time in 1973, the "arab oil boycott" started. We did not know much about the arabs at the time.

The first thing everybody did was go out and fill up their gas tanks. This made the problem worse, of course.

The shortages started to hit the consumer level about a month later. There were, indeed, gas lines, and odd-even rationingin the big cities, but out in the countryside, you could usually get gas. What you did do, though, was make sure you never got below half a tank without filling up. There were reports of violence in the gas lines in California and Chicago but most everybody cooperated.

The first to go were the independent gas stations. In those days, there were little businessmen that bought gas on the open market, and usually undersold the gas giants. When the shortages hit, these guys could not "hedge" and also, they could not get gas, so either they had to charge more for their gas, or else they would not be able to get gas, so they just shut the doors. The fossils of these gas stations are still found in the older parts of most cities.

Fuel oil also got in short supply, and the response of the college I was going to at the time was to only run the heat in the dorms 4 hours per day, in theevenenings. We all wore more clothes. There were a lot of problems with people running out of fuel oil in the northeast. People were converting back to coal heat, and also, firewood was in short supply for awhile.

The response to all of this by the US auto companies was the invention and promotion of the Pinto and the Vega, small, junky cars with small motors that would occasionally blow up if you hit them just right in a car accident. These were the two biggest abominations in US auto history, Toyota took advantage of this ineptitude and really started to gain a foothold in the US auto business, and it has never been the same since.

In those days, there was no CNN and no Fox, so no one telling us 24 hours a day we had a problem, so most of the time we forgot about it and went about our business. Beer was 35 cents a glass. Gas went from about 29 cents to 55 cents a gallon between October and June. It was pretty common for young ladies (this is your mom I am talking about) to go around with little or no underwear, and AIDS had not been invented yet. Reefer was used openly on most campuses. There were some guys coming back from Nam with bullet holes in them. They were never quite right in the head, we thought.

One thing that really cheesed us off is that we had a couple of Kuwaitis going to school with us. They were kind of free spirits, so we did not really bug them nor them us. Every six months, they got a new top of the line Oldsmobile and $10,000 in cash for "spending". They had no idea how to drive, though, so that was the life span for the cars. The Kuwaitis survived, though. I wonder what happened to them?

In about December of '73, Tricky Dick Nixon, who we all hated anyway, cameout with the 55 mph nationwide speed limit. This was really annoying because it really made interstate travel boring, but had the immediate effect of increasing the gas supply about 10% and also, there was an immediate reduction in traffic fatalities. This lasted all the way up until the mid-80's.

By summer, someone started pumping the oil again, and things were more or less back to normal for about the next 3-4 years, except, in those days, anyone graduating with a geology degree would get a instant high-paying job in the oil patch. Gas was more expensive but you could get it. There was an unusually bad winter in about '76 in the Northeast and there were spot shortages of fuel oil again, but by then, a lot of people had turned to gas and it was not so bad.

In 1978-1979 a lot of the iranians in the country were doing protests against the US support of the Shah of Iran and for the Ayatollah Khomeni. We thought this was comical at the time, becasue who were these Iranians and so what anyway? Some of them even went so far as to chain themselves outside the factory where I was working, to get local TV converage. So not long after that, the iranian revolution happened, and the gas price went from the mid-30s per gallon to about 80 cents within about two months. This, too, was painful, and there were shortages, but most were taken care of by the even-odd rationing. and I do not remember this being quite so bad supply wise. A few more people had tired to install pot bellied stoves in their houses.

Politically, though, TSHTF for poor old Jimmy Carter. There was a big buildup in inflation from the previous oil problems, plus a lot of layoffs due to the economy slowing down, plus this energy problem at the same time, plus by this time interest rates were starting to go up, so the housing market went to hell.

He knew all along that the root cause of all of this was the way we were trying to use energy, and tried to show leadership by telling us to conserve, even to the extent of shutting off the lights on the whitehouse christmas tree in '78 or '79 (another old timer will have to tell us which). Of course, he was right, but nobody wanted to hear it.

That, children, is the story of the 70's.

[MonteQuest]

I am 53. I was living in San Diego at the time. Gas was rationed and available on odd even days according to your license plate. Gas lines could be 2 miles long to get 5 gals. Sometimes you waited for hours and the station ran out before you got any. Often only 1 in 10 stations had any gas. Many cars ran out in the gas line and were pushed into the bushes or yards to get them out of the way. People camped out in their cars overnight to be the first in line. Some people rented their license plates to those who had run out of gas and need ed a few gallons to get home. Fights broke out in the gas lines. Butlers, maids, etc we given all kinds of shit for filling up their "masters" cars.

A gas can could not be found anywhere. People drove around with the WWII "jerry" cans strapped to their bumpers. In those days, there was a gas station on "every" corner at a city intersection. Like the post above said, many of the independents went broke. Over the next few years gas stations disappeared like a species going extinct.

[JohnDenver]

I got my first car in 1976. I'm sure there were some sporadic difficulties here and there, but the period of "$80 oil" had basically no effect at all on the visible world. In 1979, "cruising" (i.e. driving up and down the street) was a popular pasttime, and muscle cars were big. The high price of oil had no effect at all on these sorts of gas-wasting activities. I personally wasted a lot of gasoline driving around, 4-wheeling, motorcycling etc. I mowed lawns in the summer, and wasted a lot of gas driving to the jobs and filling up the mower. Never once did the price of gasoline give me pause or make me think. Honestly, I never even noticed that there was a "crisis" happening. The shopping malls were packed, people were cruising on Saturday night, the motocross track was full, recreational boating was big, the freeways in the morning were jammed for miles in both directions, the air above Denver was so thick with pollution that people called it "the Brown Cloud". In short, if you think $60 oil, or $80 oil, or even $120 oil is going stop the rush hour and kill Walmart etc., I think you're a victim of wishful thinking.
Reading Pup's post, I did remember one amusing side note from the 70s. During the Iran hostage crisis, there was a guy in Denver who hand painted his van with crude pictures of steaming turds, and the message "EAT SHIT IRAN". That was pretty funny.

[Barbara]

I was a child in 1973 but I remember well what they still call "austerity".
The italian govt prohibited car circulation on Sundays, only ambulances and public transport were allowed, in order to spare oil. It went on for months, but people accepted it quite well. There were some people inventing the most funny things to go around on Sundays, like bicycle powered cars!
On Mondays, newspapers showed photos of the most interesting vehicles seen on the street the day before.

I remember the "austerity" like a wonderful time of my life... but of course, I was just a child...

[stepka]

Hmm, I was a teenager in the 70s and grew up in a college town in Missouri. I don't remember any long lines at the gas stations, but I do remember that people started driving much smaller cars. Some of them were pretty goofy looking too, since the manufacturers tried to make them look roomy inside, even though they weren't. More people carpooled too, but abandoned that as quickly as they could, since it caused problems for many people.

The prices didn't stop the teenagers from driving all over creation though. They just got the money any way they could.

There was some speculation at the time that we might be running out of oil, but that was never taken very seriously that I can remember. What I do remember though, is some economist saying not to worry about the oil supply--we have at least 25 years before we have to even start worrying about that.

For Christmas in 1979 I bought my father an Ayatollah Khomeini dartboard. We all had a good laugh.

[Aaron]

Locking gas caps

[tmazanec1]

I was born 1958. No driver's license until about the Nineties. About all that changed for me was seeing the end of gas station trading stamps (I used to paste them for my father) and seeing mentions of Energy Crisis on some sitcoms.

[lowem]

I was just a small kid then. My father drove one of those Mini cars. I guess they were pretty popular at the time :

[fastbike]

The 70's oil shocks gave us a fright as we were close to 100% dependant on imported oil.
Our (NZ) government's response was:
- "car-less" days (you had to nominate the one day a week you wouldn't use the car. Most families only had one car so it was unpopular.)
- subsidies for conversion of cars to run LPG and CNG (as we had good supplies of NG)
- a politically controversial program to build a NG-to-petrol (gasoline) plant. This had a very poor EROEI and was still being used in the mid eighties well after the crisis and when oil had sunk to $12 a barrel, thus wasting our precious NG resource. We are now paying for this with premature depletion of our NG reserves.

In summary, government moves wasted resources without having a long term impact. The politicians panicked and built grandiose schemes which did nothing to address the underlying problem: "Oil is a finite resource".

[Leanan]

I was talking with a friend today about the '70s oil crisis. (He had seen a promo for Oil Storm, and we got to discussing gas prices.) He was old enough to be driving during the '70s oil shock, and remembers it as being terrible. He was working as a cable installer, and so needed gas. He would go to the gas station at 10pm, park at the pump, and go to sleep. When he woke up the next day, the line behind him would be blocks long.

He also remembers the economic effects as being devastating. No one had money for gas or shopping, so his once-bustling neighborhood became a ghost town. People were losing their jobs left and right. Crime rose, because people were frustrated and didn't have anything else to do. It's not something he ever wants to see happen again.

[rockdoc123]

Yes it was nasty. But in real terms the oil price during the 70's crisis was the equivalent of $100 in 2005 currency. Car's were also way less fuel efficient than they are now and there was not as much wide spread use of alternative power sources such as natural gas and electricity. There is absolutely no doubt this will happen again....decreasing product, increasing demand. The real question is when.

[bobcousins]

I keep seeing this assertion that we are less dependent on oil, but that seems to fly in the face of all the evidence I have seen.

Just 10 years ago, I used to be able to walk into local high street and do all my food shopping. Now it is all pubs and winebars, restaurants and take aways. The supermarkets are now all in out of town centres, as are things like hardware stores.

Fruit and veg used to be seasonal items, now they are flown in from around the world.

There are plenty of other trends as well. Deregulation of the energy market place has led to a big reduction in both spare operating capacity and fuel inventory. Heard of Just In Time?

We are surely closer to the edge of the cliff than we ever were.

[gnm]

I keep seeing "but in adjusted 70's $ it was X$ so its ok" and X varies anywhere from $57 to $130 or so - I find that hard to believe and I suspect it is closer to $70. Anyone have a better take on that?

Sleeping in his car in order to buy gas.......

-G

[pup55]

http://peakoil.com/forum12.html
http://peakoil.com/fortopic359.html+income

We had this conversation awhile back, and it is even more relevant today since the US congress recently declined to raise the minimum wage...

But to reiterate, the effect of the high gas prices depends 100% on who you are.

The reason: The bottom 2/3 of all workers in the US have had shrinking real incomes since 1982.

Example: A minimum wage worker can only buy about 2 gallons of gas for an hours' work right now. This compares to nearly 4 gallons a couple of years ago.

The 2 gallon level is is just as bad as it was in 1982 when the last recession hit, maybe a little worse, since I made that calculation in August.

Note that the "gas affordability index" indicator did not (apparently) predict the outcome of the presidential election, but this, too, suggests that due to declining average income, the average schmoe is much more impacted by high gas prices at the current level than in 1982, especially in light of the credit card debt that these people have.

So, if you are on the bottom of the income distribution curve, the so-called inflation adjusted gas price does not mean anything. More interesting to look at the amount of disposable income people have and decide from there what the pain level is.

I should probably re-do the calculation for somebody 22 years old right out of college and see what happens. I will bet the gas price is just as bad or worse right now than it was in 1982, when you adjust the price based on the starting salary for a college graduate rather than the inflation adjustment that the government uses.

[rockdoc123]

pup55 ...good point but in regards to the schmoe at the bottom of the heap. Back in the mid-70's he likely drove a huge chrysler or chev with fuel economy that is no where near what he can get from his KIA or SmartCar today. Assuming he is driving the same distances for his "subsistance" then I would think he can purchase more today given his base wages have gone up compared to where they were in the seventies. Please post your calculations as I am likely missing something here.
My simple example would be that when I entered the workforce in the mid-seventies starting salaries in my profession were about 11 to 12 K per year.....now they are 30 - 40 K per year. Petol during the crisis was close to its current price when it peaked.