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WorldPetroleum
Consumption
1940-1975
brought a sudden and dramatic halt
to the West's idyllic energy exis–
tence. As a U.S. House Foreign Af–
fairs Subcommittee report declared:
"Never befare in the history of man–
kind have so many wealthy, indus–
trialized, militarily powerful and
large states been at the potential
merey of smaU, independent, poten–
tially unstable states which wi ll pro–
vide, for the foreseeable future , the
fue! of advanced societies."
The supreme irooy of the energy
crisis is that it didn't have to hap–
pen. And, in the long run, etfecting
any kind of meaningful cure will be
difficult unless Westerners come to
grips with sorne of the major factors
that contributed to the crisis in the
first place. So let's go back in the
not-too-distant past and see how it
all began.
Sowing the Seeds of a Future Crisis
At the turn of the twentieth centu ry,
petroleum played a negligible part
in supplying the energy needs of the
industrial West. Coa! remained the
world's number one fossil fue! until
well into the 1930s. But U.S. pro–
ducers soon hit pay dirt with the
discovery of the giant oi l fields of
Oklahoma, Texas, and California.
At the time, supplies from these oil
fields seemed limitless. The United
States guickly became the world's
leading oil producer. During the
thirties she turned out almost two–
thirds of the total global production,
and her exports accounted for ap–
proximately one-nfth of all oil con–
sumed by other nations.
16
With the rise of the oil industry
carne another twentieth-century
phenomenon-the automobile. At
first it was strictly a plaything for
the wealthy. But H enry Ford
changed all that with his mass-pro–
duced Model T. Unfortunately, as it
turned out, the real inspirational ge–
nius behind the industry was not
Ford, but Alfred P. Sloan of Gen–
eral Motors. Unlike Ford, Sloan had
in mind something other than sim–
ply fulfilling practica! transportation
Not satisfied with
emasculating the
automobile industry,
General Motors took
corporate aim at what
had been a successful
mass transit system.
needs. Sloan introduced a new con–
cept to the industry that proved to
be the downfall of the Model T.
Euphemistically speaking, it was
called the annual model change or
upgraded styling. Later it carne to
be known as planned obsolescence.
Sloan's plan was simple :. Make
the prospective customer dissatisfied
with the particular model car he
then possessed. Sell him on the idea
tha t he would benefit socially from
having a heavier car, a bigger en–
gine, or gaudier-looking tail fins. As
Sloan himself put it: "Many wonder
why the automobile industry brings
out a new model every year. The
reason is simple.... We want to
make you dissat isfied with your
curren! car so you will buy a new
one."
Sloan's successors at General Mo–
tors took up the gospel of planned
obsolescence with egua! fervor.
"Think of the results to the indus–
trial world," gushed Charles Ketter–
ing, "of putting upon the market a
product tha t doubles the malleable
iron consumption, triples the plate
glass production, and guadruples
the use of rubber [another petro–
leum by - product) .... As a
consumer of raw materials, the au–
tomobile has no egua! in the history
of the world."
Except for Ra lph Nader, Vanee
Packard and an isolated few who
raised their voices in this mass-pro–
duced wi lderness. nobody took
much exceptíon to General Motors '
philosophy. As late as 1970, GM's
Board Chairman James M. Roche
could say unabashedly: "Planned
obsolescence in my opinion is an–
other word for progress."
In those terms of progress, Gen–
eral Motors and her sister automo–
bile manufacturers performed
admirably. Styling changes alone
wasted over $5 billion ayear during
the 1950s, or the equivalen! of $700
for each new car. Power options, a u–
tomatic transmissions, increased
weight and tack-on smog devices
brought the products of Detroit's
automolive ingenuity to a new low
in the early 1970s. Massive super–
highway systems and automotive
complexes themselves began to
chew up ever increasing amounts of
energy.
Gas mi leage dropped from an av–
erage of 15 miles per gallon for all
cars in 1946 to under 12 miles per
gallon for the 1973 models. Annual
fue! consumption for motor vehicles
skyrocketed from 20 billion gallons
in 1945 to over 90 billion in 1970.
By 1970, 30 percent of all the petro–
leum consumed in the United States
was burned by automobiles.
One author's experience during
this energy-consumptive heyday
bears repeating. ln the book
Energy
and the Earth Machine.
Donald
Carr recalls what it was like to own
a car before the American automo-
The
PLAIN TRUTH February 1978