Jimmy Carter, "The President's Proposed Energy Policy." 18 April 1977.
Vital Speeches of the Day, Vol. XXXXIII, No. 14, May 1, 1977, pp. 418-420.

Jimmy Carter delivered this televised speech on April 18, 1977.
Download audio MP3 [ 16.8 MB ] from : http://millercenter.virginia.edu/scripps/diglibrary/prezspeeches/carter/

Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem
unprecedented in our history. With the exception of preventing war, this is
the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes. The
energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act
quickly.

It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to
get progressively worse through the rest of this century.
We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our
children and grandchildren.

We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking
resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the
future control us.

Two days from now, I will present my energy proposals to the Congress. Its
members will be my partners and they have already given me a great deal of
valuable advice. Many of these proposals will be unpopular. Some will cause
you to put up with inconveniences and to make sacrifices.
The most important thing about these proposals is that the alternative may
be a national catastrophe. Further delay can affect our strength and our
power as a nation.

Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and
the ability of the President and the Congress to govern. This difficult
effort will be the "moral equivalent of war" -- except that we will be
uniting our efforts to build and not destroy.

I know that some of you may doubt that we face real energy shortages. The
1973 gasoline lines are gone, and our homes are warm again. But our energy
problem is worse tonight than it was in 1973 or a few weeks ago in the dead
of winter. It is worse because more waste has occurred, and more time has
passed by without our planning for the future. And it will get worse every
day until we act.

The oil and natural gas we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are running
out. In spite of increased effort, domestic production has been dropping
steadily at about six percent a year. Imports have doubled in the last five
years. Our nation's independence of economic and political action is
becoming increasingly constrained. Unless profound changes are made to lower
oil consumption, we now believe that early in the 1980s the world will be
demanding more oil that it can produce.

The world now uses about 60 million barrels of oil a day and demand
increases each year about 5 percent. This means that just to stay even we
need the production of a new Texas every year, an Alaskan North Slope every
nine months, or a new Saudi Arabia every three years. Obviously, this cannot
continue.

We must look back in history to understand our energy problem. Twice in the
last several hundred years there has been a transition in the way people use
energy.

The first was about 200 years ago, away from wood -- which had provided
about 90 percent of all fuel -- to coal, which was more efficient. This
change became the basis of the Industrial Revolution.

The second change took place in this century, with the growing use of oil
and natural gas. They were more convenient and cheaper than coal, and the
supply seemed to be almost without limit. They made possible the age of
automobile and airplane travel. Nearly everyone who is alive today grew up
during this age and we have never known anything different.
Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a
third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent
renewable energy sources, like solar power.

The world has not prepared for the future. During the 1950s, people used
twice as much oil as during the 1940s. During the 1960s, we used twice as
much as during the 1950s. And in each of those decades, more oil was
consumed than in all of mankind's previous history.

World consumption of oil is still going up. If it were possible to keep it
rising during the 1970s and 1980s by 5 percent a year as it has in the past,
we could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the
end of the next decade.

I know that many of you have suspected that some supplies of oil and gas are
being withheld. You may be right, but suspicions about oil companies cannot
change the fact that we are running out of petroleum.

All of us have heard about the large oil fields on Alaska's North Slope. In
a few years when the North Slope is producing fully, its total output will
be just about equal to two years' increase in our nation's energy demand.
Each new inventory of world oil reserves has been more disturbing than the
last. World oil production can probably keep going up for another six or
eight years. But some time in the 1980s it can't go up much more. Demand
will overtake production. We have no choice about that.

But we do have a choice about how we will spend the next few years. Each
American uses the energy equivalent of 60 barrels of oil per person each
year. Ours is the most wasteful nation on earth. We waste more energy than
we import. With about the same standard of living, we use twice as much
energy per person as do other countries like Germany, Japan and Sweden.
One choice is to continue doing what we have been doing before. We can drift
along for a few more years.

Our consumption of oil would keep going up every year. Our cars would
continue to be too large and inefficient. Three-quarters of them would
continue to carry only one person -- the driver -- while our public
transportation system continues to decline. We can delay insulating our
houses, and they will continue to lose about 50 percent of their heat in
waste.

We can continue using scarce oil and natural gas to generate electricity, and
continue wasting two-thirds of their fuel value in the process.
If we do not act, then by 1985 we will be using 33 percent more energy than
we do today.

We can't substantially increase our domestic production, so we would need to
import twice as much oil as we do now. Supplies will be uncertain. The cost
will keep going up. Six years ago, we paid $3.7 billion for imported oil.
Last year we spent $37 billion -- nearly ten times as much -- and this year
we may spend over $45 billion.

Unless we act, we will spend more than $550 billion for imported oil by
1985 -- more than $2,500 a year for every man, woman, and child in America.
Along with that money we will continue losing American jobs and becoming
increasingly vulnerable to supply interruptions.

Now we have a choice. But if we wait, we will live in fear of embargoes. We
could endanger our freedom as a sovereign nation to act in foreign affairs.
Within ten years we would not be able to import enough oil -- from any
country, at any acceptable price.

If we wait, and do not act, then our factories will not be able to keep our
people on the job with reduced supplies of fuel. Too few of our utilities
will have switched to coal, our most abundant energy source.
We will not be ready to keep our transportation system running with smaller,
more efficient cars and a better network of buses, trains and public
transportation.

We will feel mounting pressure to plunder the environment. We will have a
crash program to build more nuclear plants, strip-mine and burn more coal,
and drill more offshore wells than we will need if we begin to conserve now.
Inflation will soar, production will go down, people will lose their jobs.
Intense competition will build up among nations and among the different
regions within our own country.

If we fail to act soon, we will face an economic, social and political
crisis that will threaten our free institutions.
But we still have another choice. We can begin to prepare right now. We can
decide to act while there is time.

That is the concept of the energy policy we will present on Wednesday. Our
national energy plan is based on ten fundamental principles.
The first principle is that we can have an effective and comprehensive
energy policy only if the government takes responsibility for it and if the
people understand the seriousness of the challenge and are willing to make
sacrifices.

The second principle is that healthy economic growth must continue. Only by
saving energy can we maintain our standard of living and keep our people at
work. An effective conservation program will create hundreds of thousands of
new jobs.

The third principle is that we must protect the environment. Our energy
problems have the same cause as our environmental problems -- wasteful use
of resources. Conservation helps us solve both at once.

The fourth principle is that we must reduce our vulnerability to potentially
devastating embargoes. We can protect ourselves from uncertain supplies by
reducing our demand for oil, making the most of our abundant resources such
as coal, and developing a strategic petroleum reserve.

The fifth principle is that we must be fair. Our solutions must ask equal
sacrifices from every region, every class of people, every interest group.
Industry will have to do its part to conserve, just as the consumers will.
The energy producers deserve fair treatment, but we will not let the oil
companies profiteer.

The sixth principle, and the cornerstone of our policy, is to reduce the
demand through conservation. Our emphasis on conservation is a clear
difference between this plan and others which merely encouraged crash
production efforts. Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical
source of energy. Conservation is the only way we can buy a barrel of oil
for a few dollars. It costs about $13 to waste it.

The seventh principle is that prices should generally reflect the true
replacement costs of energy. We are only cheating ourselves if we make
energy artificially cheap and use more than we can really afford.

The eighth principle is that government policies must be predictable and
certain. Both consumers and producers need policies they can count on so
they can plan ahead. This is one reason I am working with the Congress to
create a new Department of Energy, to replace more than 50 different
agencies that now have some control over energy.

The ninth principle is that we must conserve the fuels that are scarcest and
make the most of those that are more plentiful. We can't continue to use oil
and gas for 75 percent of our consumption when they make up seven percent of
our domestic reserves. We need to shift to plentiful coal while taking care
to protect the environment, and to apply stricter safety standards to
nuclear energy.

The tenth principle is that we must start now to develop the new,
unconventional sources of energy we will rely on in the next century.

These ten principles have guided the development of the policy I would
describe to you and the Congress on Wednesday.
Our energy plan will also include a number of specific goals, to measure our
progress toward a stable energy system.

These are the goals we set for 1985:
--Reduce the annual growth rate in our energy demand to less than two percent.
--Reduce gasoline consumption by ten percent below its current level.
--Cut in half the portion of United States oil which is imported, from a
potential level of 16 million barrels to six million barrels a day.
--Establish a strategic petroleum reserve of one billion barrels, more than
six months' supply.
--Increase our coal production by about two thirds to more than 1 billion
tons a year.
--Insulate 90 percent of American homes and all new buildings.
--Use solar energy in more than two and one-half million houses.

We will monitor our progress toward these goals year by year. Our plan will
call for stricter conservation measures if we fall behind.
I cant tell you that these measures will be easy, nor will they be popular.
But I think most of you realize that a policy which does not ask for changes
or sacrifices would not be an effective policy.

This plan is essential to protect our jobs, our environment, our standard of
living, and our future. Whether this plan truly makes a difference will be decided
not here in Washington, but in every town and every factory, in every home and on
every highway and every farm.

I believe this can be a positive challenge. There is something especially
American in the kinds of changes we have to make. We have been proud,
through our history of being efficient people.
We have been proud of our leadership in the world. Now we have a chance
again to give the world a positive example.
And we have been proud of our vision of the future. We have always wanted to
give our children and grandchildren a world richer in possibilities than
we've had. They are the ones we must provide for now. They are the ones who
will suffer most if we don't act.

I've given you some of the principles of the plan.
I am sure each of you will find something you don't like about the specifics
of our proposal. It will demand that we make sacrifices and changes in our
lives. To some degree, the sacrifices will be painful -- but so is any
meaningful sacrifice. It will lead to some higher costs, and to some greater
inconveniences for everyone.

But the sacrifices will be gradual, realistic and necessary. Above all, they
will be fair. No one will gain an unfair advantage through this plan. No one
will be asked to bear an unfair burden. We will monitor the accuracy of data
from the oil and natural gas companies, so that we will know their true
production, supplies, reserves, and profits.

The citizens who insist on driving large, unnecessarily powerful cars must
expect to pay more for that luxury.

We can be sure that all the special interest groups in the country will
attack the part of this plan that affects them directly. They will say that
sacrifice is fine, as long as other people do it, but that their sacrifice
is unreasonable, or unfair, or harmful to the country. If they succeed, then
the burden on the ordinary citizen, who is not organized into an interest
group, would be crushing.

There should be only one test for this program: whether it will help our country.
Other generation of Americans have faced and mastered great challenges. I
have faith that meeting this challenge will make our own lives even richer.
If you will join me so that we can work together with patriotism and
courage, we will again prove that our great nation can lead the world into
an age of peace, independence and freedom.