MR. CARTER'S CALL TO ARMS IN THE "ENERGY WAR": In his most emotional speech to date, President Carter, on Sunday evening July 15, called upon the American people to "commit ourselves to a rebirth of the American spirit," and specifically, to "win the war on the energy problem" and rescue the nation from its bondage to foreign oil producers, who now supply nearly half of the nation's oil. "Energy will be the immediate test of our ability to unite the nation."
Reaction both at home and abroad to the president's nationally televised address, and his two follow-up speeches the next day in Kansas City and Detroit, generally can be summed up this way: long on emotions but short and repetitive on specifics.
The President actually gave two speeches on Sunday, the first one being an impassionate plea for moral resurgence in the nation as a whole — though very short on specifics here as well. He probed no causes and gave no solutions, choosing only to outline the symptoms of America's post-Vietnam, post-Watergate malaise. These symptoms of America's "crisis of confidence" are everywhere, he said: "For the first time, a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years .... There is growing disrespect for government, for the churches, schools, the news media and other institutions."
Though some observers said Mr. Carter "sounded like a Baptist preacher" giving the type of campaign "sermon" that won him one primary after another on his road to the White House, he didn't address the real moral and spiritual crises affecting the nation which have resulted in the lifting of God's blessings from it — the shocking divorce and illegitimacy rates, the morass of drug and alcohol addiction, especially among the young, the abominable crime statistics (on an upward swing now again) as well as the tidal wave of social legislation which runs counter to the laws of the God. Yr. Carter appealed to for help at the end of his speech. All such real crises lay outside the purview of his 33-minute address.
Mr. Carter counseled the American people to "have faith" — but not in God. Instead, he said, "We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our ability to govern ourselves and faith in the future." The President also spoke a "smooth thing" (see Isaiah 30:10) when he appealed: "Whenever you have a chance, say something good about our country."
Government to the Rescue
The President referred to the "isolated world of Washington" and said that "the gap between our citizens and our government has never been so wide."
Yet, ironically, it is to be the government which will rescue the nation from its energy dilemma. The President called for the establishment of an Energy Security Corporation as well as an Energy Mobilization Board. The latter would cut through red tape — government red tap2 generated by conflicting government agencies — to order completion of energy projects such as refineries and pipe lines.
In response, a vice president of Mobil Corporation said: "It's sort of an irony that we need a government-created board to break government bottlenecks." An official of Getty Oil added: "It's incredible that you have to create a whole new bureaucracy just to sweep up after the old one."
The new layer of bureaucracy is to preside over a ten-year crash program to produce alternate and synthetic fuel sources, and will be — at $142 billion — the "most massive commitment of funds in our nation's history," said Mr. Carter. Nearly all the money will be raised by taxing the so-called "wind fall profits" of the oil companies.
The president appealed to the American public to rally around him in unison to win the energy war, but it is all too clear that unlike World War II, in which the government mobilized resources through the War Production board, there is no clearly perceived enemy. Many people blame "Big Oil" for the gas shortages, others (and more correctly) Big Government, with its ham-stringing restrictions on the market. And now the government is trying to focus the blame away from itself and almost solely on OPEC.
Far from a unified approach, the ambitious new energy program is bound to divide the nation even further. An all-out effort to strip-mine the coal from Montana and the shale oil from Colorado is bound to anger environmentalists. Protracted court battles will ensue. And those concerned over the environment certainly have a case when it comes to the matter of synthetic fuel production. The cost is immense, both in dollars and in the impact upon land and water.
"Synfuel" production from shale and coal would demand immense amounts of water (2 to 3 barrels for every barrel of shale oil) from two of the nation's most water-starved regions, the Colorado River Basin and the Northern Great Plains. Making one million barrels of oil from shale a day, equivalent to an eighth of the current oil imports, would require moving a billion tons of rock and residue each year, roughly the same amount of material excavated in the building of the Panama Canal.
The new federal energy super-bodies will also do constant battle with state environmental agencies, such as those in California which don't want more refineries or interstate pipelines crossing their "sovereign" soil.
The push for coal will also cost additional bi1lior.s for the rebuilding and relocation of railroad facilities. Then there will. be the push to develop "coal-slurry" pipelines, which transport a powdered-coal mush. These systems gulp prodigious amounts of water — again from the driest half of the U.S.
Thus the president's plan could result in a multi-billion dollar fiasco and only further split a badly divided nation.
Foreign Reaction: Dollar Down, Gold Up
It's worth noting that foreign reaction, especially economic, to the all-out energy push was generally negative. The dollar declined almost everywhere and gold zoomed up to $292.87 an ounce, a new all-time high.
Throughout Europe, official reaction to the speech was polite, but newspapers and bankers were openly negative. "The President really didn't say much," said a Zurich banker. An Italian broker added: "That speech was just a pep talk that solved nothing, and that's why the dollar fell." The governor of the Bank of Greece said, bluntly: "What he announced is not enough."
The Communist Chinese paid particular attention to the negative mood of the address. China's official news agency reported the speech at length — mentioning Carter's self-critical account of his leadership, and his definition of America's self-doubts about its sense of purpose.
A11 in all, few believe the nation is in a mood to believe that Mr. Carter has the answers or that he could lead the American people in the "energy war."
ON THE WORLD SCENE
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