1973 Fuel Crisis

People depend upon gasoline more than ever today to get around to where they need to go. Worldwide we need gasoline to power the trains, the cars, semis, and ships that carry us to work, to school, and bring our food to the supermarkets. What if one day people woke up to find there was a gasoline shortage not just locally but all across the United States? As the US watched the price of gasoline climb higher than ever over the last fifteen years, it was a big relief to everyone when gasoline prices began to drop to where they are today. This is not something new that threatens the United States. This is a major concern that brings back the nightmares of the 1973 oil crisis. Millennials today have no idea how bad things could get if it

Today we have hybrids and some models of electric cars. People have shown ingenuity in recycling frying oil to get their vehicles moving. Yet, for the most part, these automobiles are out of reach for the majority of Americans. This is not a society in which a person can toss their Cadillac Seville into the junkyard to buy an electric car. All that does is fill up the junkyards with cars nobody could use because they run on gasoline. Most people need their old cars to use as a trade in or a second car. In cities like Washington DC, it is easier for people to make it to work using the Metro system and buses. Smaller cities do not always have public transportation available. Some have on a few buses that of course, run on gasoline! That may do, though, if it came down to it. Many people would have to rely more heavily on car pooling, taxi cabs, Uber, public transportation, walking and bicycling to work and school. Fares for taxis, Uber and the city bus would increase to cover the incredibly high cost of gasoline.

This may not actually be a bad thing. A gasoline shortage combined with a hike in prices could be the one thing that tips everyone over into purchasing electric cars or even hybrids rather than gasoline run cars. That is what happened 40 years ago. The oil crisis then caused everyone to change how their car-buying habits. Gone were the great big boats that glided down the street, gaining a whopping 8 miles to the gallon. Japan was producing small vehicles that were better than what America was pushing and that 's what the citizens went for: smaller, more efficient with gasoline foreign