OPEC's embargo caused a recession which destroyed demand for oil for nearly a decade.

Don't trust the president. Trust your brains. Read Campbell and think.

Al Gore, a personal friend of Jimmy Carter, outlined in his book Earth In The Balance 1992 a Global Marshall Plan for saving the planet and creating a better life for everyone.
He is still going around the country doing speeches, mostly at universities, regarding the environment.

http://www.algoresupportcenter.com/eitb3.html
http://www.algoresupportcenter.com/eitb1.html
http://www.algoresupportcenter.com/eitb2.html

Yes this is the stock answer; but demand in the 70's was much lower than it is today. It doesn't add up; the amount that was "conserved" due to the OPEC embargos wouldn't last long in a world with 90's demand levels, but we got all the way through the 90's and at least halfway through the 00's with barely a hitch. I think it's pretty clear that they underestimated how much was left to find in places like (eg) the Gulf of Mexico, and how much extraction techniques could be improved. Now; just because people made mistakes before doesn't mean they're making them again now, but I still think it makes a good object lesson and shows that you need to be careful when extrapolating present trends into the future.

just listend to the MP3 of the speech.
its amazing how the issues and arguments are pretty much exactly the same then as they are now. Clearly all of this is nothing new and our problems are simply because the powers that be choose to ignore the signs.
I wonder if you play Bush's energy speeches backwards this is what you'll hear

Remember, they extrapolating from current trends. The problem wasn't really how much we were using, it was how fast the population was growing, and the standard of living was increasing. From the 1970s, they were looking at spiking energy demand over the next two or three decades.
It didn't happen, partly because of the oil embargos. It encouraged more energy efficient cars, homes, offices and industries. And it led the western nations to discourage the American way of life among developing nations. Though we didn't get much greener ourselves, we preached to other countries that they should. And many of them listened, banning cars with more than four cylinders, putting their money into public transportation rather than highways, etc.

But what they really didn't anticipate back in the '70s was that the population bomb would be diffused. All over the world, birth rates fell sharply from what they were in the '60s and '70s. Europe, South America, Africa, China, India...the only place they didn't drop sharply was the U.S., and that's mainly due to all the immigrants we take in. The combination of women's rights, birth control technology, and urbanization greatly reduced population growth in most other countries.
The other thing they didn't anticipate was that the gap between the haves the have-nots would widen into a chasm. They imagined that the rest of the world would catch up to the west, and therefore demand similar amounts of energy. It didn't happen. The rich got richer, the poor got poorer. It may be grossly unfair, but it's let the party go on a lot longer for those of us on the industrialized side of the divide.

If it was a chasm before what will we call the gap*10 what it is today that will be coming to all towns, states, countries in the future?
I have been mailing my local version of PBS with an outline of a show based on these two speeches. They should be able to have it ready just in time for the northern hemispheres summer oil spike.

There's your problem right there. A simple "God bless America" and we'd be all flying our hovercars (powered by Mr. Fusion℠, of course) into the sunset by now...

But seriously, I hadn't been conceived yet, but it seems to me that the top down approach isn't feasible. Any attempt to preempt the crisis by using the institutions that helped create it was doomed to fail. A more cautious (increased UNFPA funding, introduction into the public school curriculum, adorable mascots, etc.) and incremental approach to the problem may have survived his presidency, with Regent Reagan forced to pay lip service at least. I'm also pretty angry at those dinosaurs that had the nerve to die under the North Sea, which probably would have finished off any modest efforts towards energy autarchy.

Carter got booted out for multiple reasons, and his PO speech was soon after he was sworn in as President, not when he was running for reelection.
My parents are die hard democrats, they grew up with FDR saving the world <in their minds> and as far as they are concerned to this day Democrats have all the good ideas. Unfortunately for Carter he was very very clumsy and ham-handed in dealing with issues, by the time he left office it had a lot more to do with geopolitics and stagflation than it ever had to do with his energy conservation programs.

I've been talking to my mother over the last couple of days about Carter, and the mood in the late 70's. At the time she wasn’t aware of exactly what he said - but remembers vividly the talk of the time. Apparently my dad was involved with a group of pretty radical hippies and he decided to move us off to a bit of land in the middle of know where, a 12x12 corrugated iron shed with no glass in the windows or doors. There we were going live off the land while civilization collapsed around us. Being a city boy he lasted about 8 weeks. Mum on the other hand (country girl) was happy as Larry!

So anyway – when I talk to her she laughs and says – “oh you sound just like your father did all those years ago – and it didn’t happen then”. She listens, and is very open to what I’m saying, but there is a part of her that just thinks it’s a replay of history.

I am afraid your mother is dead wrong, but I would be very happy if it turned out she was completely right and nothing major happens these next few years.

Yep - I know but it's mothers day so I'll shut up today and start again tomorrow!

In Jimmy Carter's 1977 Energy speech, he said:
"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 1980's the world will be demanding more oil than 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."

Obviously, we didn't run out of crude oil in the 1980's. Also, if you run the numbers starting at 60 mbbls in 1977 to today's current consumption rate, world oil demand has increased at an average rate of only 1% per year.
So, if we didn't run out in the 1980's and world demand growth since 1977 has been 1%/year rather than the 1977 rate of 5%/year, what factors caused growth rates to slow down?

He was right - if world oil demand growth at 5% per year had continued, we would have been in deep doodoo in the mid to late 1980's.
Why did annual world oil demand growth fall from 5% to 1%?

You must be too young to remember...the economy sank into a huge recession in the early 80's.
Interest rates of 18% for an average home loan and record high energy prices slashed economic growth.

Consumers bought smaller cars and carpooled. Government regulations demanded energy conservation.
We also found some new supplies of oil such as the North Sea.

All of this prevented the doomsday scenario of Carter's speeches.
But because we didn't move off of oil, we only delayed the disaster.

hubbert was wrong about the global peak for the same exact reason. The effect however only delayed the inevitable