[Editor Note: Carter’s April 1977 energy speech was also reproduced and commented upon at MasterResource.]

Thirty-two years ago today, President Carter and his energy advisor James Schlesinger got it all wrong in an emergency television address to the nation. Their neo-Malthusian, government-as-engineer moment should never be forgotten but stand as timeless warning about the anti-market, anti-energy mentality.

In the summer of 1979, many Americans were stuck in the gasoline lines. There was a lot of lost time and nervousness. There was fighting and worse. The market as a buffer of civility was gone. Americans were not used to such a predicament and had the common sense to know that something was very abnormal and not to be tolerated. They were mad.

Here is the background of his energy speech, considered as the most important speech of his presidency:

On June 30, 1979, a weary Jimmy Carter was looking forward to a few days’ vacation in Hawaii, as Air Force One sped him away from a grueling economic summit in Tokyo.

There has not been much published on wind costs, except, generally speaking to give the impression that they are reasonable and manageable. Unfortunately, at the level of wind implementation being contemplated, particularly in the Western world, the costs are an unsupportable amount of national wealth.

On the other hand, there has been a considerable amount published on the impact of introducing large amounts of wind into electricity systems, most of it again claiming manageable considerations. Those that cite Denmark should review this series of posts. I am not aware of any conclusive analyses supporting wind integration, as most are superficial at worst, or limited in some considerable way at best.

I expect in time, based on a proper analysis, or through further real, and unhappy, experience, that none of the claims for wind will be confirmed.…

It is indisputable that for the last two-and-a-half years the Federal government has undertaken a campaign of economic sabotage against Alaska.

The Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) is 2/3 empty and declining at a 6% annual rate while billions of barrels of oil lie untapped on federal lands nearby, causing America to import hundreds of billions of dollars worth of oil while exporting tens of thousands of American jobs to foreign jurisdictions.

The Obama Administration will have killed Alaska’s economy and set back America’s economic recovery if TAPS ceases operation for lack of readily available but off-limits federal oil.

Normal Americans throughout Alaska and the entire country have responded again and again to repeated salvos of regulatory ordinance calculated to descimate Alaska’s if not the entire country’s economy. It appears to be a conscious attempt to bring chaos, unemployment and poverty to a great nation and the state with resources that could be resurrecting the entire U.S.…

“The social usefulness of well-defined property rights, free exchange, and the system of relative money prices . . . has perhaps been demonstrated most convincingly by the catastrophic failure in the twentieth century of those societies that tried to function without them.”

– Paul Heyne, “Efficiency,” in David Henderson, ed., The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics (New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1993), p. 11.

“The wildcatters showed their gratitude to their city through their philanthropy. They were not the only ones who supported good causes in our region, but many of the foundations in Houston had their beginning in the oil and gas industries.”

– Joe Pratt, Cullen/NEH Professor in History and Business, University of Houston

George Will invoked the theme of Texas exceptionalism in a recent column pitching  the state’s governor Rick Perry for the Republican presidential nomination.…