For them to pass an effective and fair plan, they will need your support and your understandingyour support to resist pressures from a few for special favors at the expense of the rest of us and your understanding that there can be no effective plan without some sacrifice from all of us. In little more than two decades we've gone from a position of energy independence to one in which almost half the oil we use comes from foreign countries, at prices that are going through the roof. We need to shift to plentiful coal, while taking care to protect the environment, and to apply stricter safety standards to nuclear energy. But our energy problem is worse tonight than it was in 1973 or a few weeks ago in the dead of winter. Our national energy plan is based on 10 fundamental principles. Jimmy Carter, Address to the Nation on Energy and National Goals: "The Malaise Speech" Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/249458, The American Presidency ProjectJohn Woolley and Gerhard PetersContact, Copyright The American Presidency ProjectTerms of Service | Privacy | Accessibility, Saturday Weekly Addresses (Radio and Webcast) (1639), State of the Union Written Messages (140). A graduate of the U.S. But a common national sacrifice to meet this serious problem should be shared by everyone-some proof that the plan is fair. Too few of our utility companies will have switched to coal, which is our most abundant energy source. We are only cheating ourselves if we make energy artificially cheap and use more than we can really afford. The selection of this time span made perfect sense from a Hollywood read more, On July 15, 1988, Die Hard, an action film starring Bruce Willis as wisecracking New York City cop John McClane, opens in theaters across the United States. If it were possible to keep it rising during the 1970's and 1980's 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. And third, it protects our Federal budget from any unreasonable burden. In a few years, when the North Slope is producing fully, its total output will be just about equal to 2 years' increase in our own Nation's energy demand. Posted by RockyTCB 3/1/2023 6:11:41 AM. Some will cause you to put up with inconveniences and to make sacrifices. I know, of course, being President, that government actions and legislation can be very important. Working with Congress, we've now formed a new Department of Energy, headed by Secretary James Schlesinger. Now we have a choice. The ninth principle is that we must conserve the fuels that are scarcest and make the most of those that are plentiful. Intense competition for oil will build up among nations and also among the different regions within our own country. The energy. Dubbed the Second Battle of the Marne, the conflict ended several days later in a major victory for the Allies. President Carter Farewell Address | C-SPAN.org I've given you some of the principles of the plan. Our cars would continue to be too large and inefficient. Every $5 billion increase in oil imports costs us 200,000 American jobs. Former President Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.), was the 39 th president of the United States, serving from 1977-1981. We will not be ready to keep our transportation system running with smaller and more efficient cars and a better network of buses, trains, and public transportation. The world has not prepared for the future. It will lead to some higher costs and to some greater inconvenience for everyone. To some degree, the sacrifices will be painful--but so is any meaningful sacrifice. Embed. It is a crisis of confidence. We can delay insulating our homes, and they will continue to lose about 50 percent of their heat in waste. 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. You may be right, but suspicions about the oil companies cannot change the fact that we are running out of petroleum. I feel like ordinary people are excluded from political power. We have the natural resources. On July 15, 1979, President Jimmy Carter addresses the nation via live television to discuss the nations energy crisis and accompanying recession. Politics, Carter said, was full of corruption, inefficiency and evasiveness; he claimed these problems grew out of a deeper, fundamental threat to American democracy. He was not referring to challenges to civil liberties or the countrys political structure or military prowess, however, but to what he called a crisis of confidence that led to domestic turmoil and the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation., At a time when Europeans and the Japanese began out-producing the U.S. in energy-efficient automobiles and some other advanced technologies, Carter said that Americans had lost faith in being the worlds leader in progress. He claimed that Americans' obsession with self-indulgence and material goods had trumped spiritualism and community values. 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. Amid looming concern regarding the scarcity of oil resources President Carter delivers a message in stark terms, urging Americans to band together in order to eliminate the wasting of energy resources. The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks right now and then reversed as we move through the 1980's, for I am tonight setting the further goal of cutting our dependence on foreign oil by one-half by the end of the next decade--a saving of over 4 1/2 million barrels of imported oil per day. As a people we know our past and we are proud of it. I have faith that meeting this challenge will make our own lives even richer. President Jimmy Carter asks Americans to sacrifice for the sake of greater energy conservation and independence. During the subsequent campaign, Goldwater said that he thought the United States should do whatever was necessary to win in Vietnam. 4 min read. But the sacrifices can be gradual, realistic, and they are necessary. I invited to Camp David people from almost every segment of our society--business and labor, teachers and preachers, Governors, mayors, and private citizens. Confidence in the future has supported everything else--public institutions and private enterprise, our own families, and the very Constitution of the United States. We can decide to act while there is still time. It will lead to some higher costs and to some greater inconvenience for everyone. They are the ones who will suffer most if we don't act. In April 1977, under the dark cloud of the energy crisis, President Jimmy Carter told the nation that the difficult effort needed to move beyond the shortages and high prices of that era "will be the moral equivalent of war.". Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern. - Jimmy Carter, Energy Address to the Nation, April 18, 1977. An effective conservation program will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. It is a certain route to failure. We've always been proud of our vision of the future. We waste more energy than we import. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual. ", "You don't see the people enough any more. It's always been easier to wait until the next year or the next term of office, to avoid political risk. This energy plan is a good insurance policyfor the future, in which relatively small premiums that we pay today will protect us in the years ahead. ", And this from a religious leader: "No material shortage can touch the important things like God's love for us or our love for one another. April 18, 1977: Address to the Nation on Energy. There are two paths to choose. Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change--to strict conservation and to the renewed use of coal and to permanent renewable energy sources like solar power. We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our ability to govern ourselves, and faith in the future of this Nation. But if we wait, we will constantly live in fear of embargoes. One such lesson is don't count conventional energy out. So, the solution of our energy crisis can also help us to conquer the crisis of the spirit in our country. This writer voted for Carter in 1976. And now we have a chance again to give the world a positive example. Every act of energy conservation like this is more than just common sense--I tell you it is an act of patriotism. Jimmy Carter Has 'Still Got Some Time In Him,' So There's Still Time to Speak Ill of Him. Forty years ago tonight, President Jimmy Carter delivered his Address to the Nation on National Energy Policy, better known as the "Moral Equivalent of War" speech. Each American uses the energy equivalent of 60 barrels of oil per person each year. This is a special night for me. We've always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own. No one will be asked to bear an unfair burden. If they succeed with this approach, then the burden on the ordinary citizen, who is not organized into an interest group, would be crushing. There is something especially American in the kinds of changes that we have to make. Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem that is unprecedented in our history. We have no choice about that. Jimmy Carter's Energy Speech of April 1977 (Is - Master Resource Thank you very much, and good night. Our consumption of oil would keep going up every year. Our energy plan will also include a number of specific goals to measure our progress toward a stable energy system. Our energy problems have the same cause as our environmental problems-wasteful use of resources. Those citizens who insist on driving large, unnecessarily powerful cars must expect to pay more for that luxury. Copyright 2023. They were more convenient and cheaper than coal, and the supply seemed to be almost without limit. I'm sure that each of you will find something you don't like about the specifics of our proposal. Above all, they will be fair. These are the goals that we set for 1985: Two days from now, I will present to the Congress my energy proposals.. Its Members will be my partners, and they have already given me a great deal of valuable advice. And this year we may spend $45 billion. He had earned it. New oil prices would also rise in 3 years to the present world level and then be increased annually to keep up with inflation. We will protect our environment. Many of these proposals will be unpopular. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends. This from a young woman in Pennsylvania: "I feel so far from government. current level; --to cut in half the portion of U.S. oil which is imported--from a potential level of 16 million barrels to 6 million barrels a day; --to establish a strategic petroleum reserve of one billion barrels, more than a 6-months supply; --to increase our coal production by about two-thirds to more than one billion tons a year;