Foreword

Cry Crisis! probes a contrived crisis and stresses the real one. It tries
not to be any more excited about what confronts America than Paul
Revere was. Revere's role, vital though it was, is no more important
than what needs to be done now. We would like Cry Crisis! to energize
a battalion of Paul Reveres.

The energy shortage the nation is now being exposed to is, we
believe, a contrived crisis designed to benefit a few. The real crisis lies
largely in our failure to see where the true crisis lies.

Is it possible reasonably to conclude that the energy
happened? We don't think so.

"crisis" just

No international effort, the United Nations included, is more com-
petent or better organized and financed than that which the oil-energy
complex puts into action. The complex collectively monopolizes
energy (except for solar and tidal capabilities and a few remaining
forests), and energy is a major component of the world's principal
currencies. The energy people know where the energy is, and in what
quantities. They have computer programs, growth rates, demand rates,
and discovery rates down cold. They know where and when they want
to move capital. Theirs is not a world they will be surprised in, but it is
a world full of smprises for us. In 1973 they were hardselling oil in
Europe while talking conservation to us. They can play wells and tank
cars and storage tanks and tankers and refineries and pipelines like a
console.

Evidence of their contriving is circumstantial, and is likely to re-
main so. It is naive to wait for some revelatory memo or tape (the
Chairman of the Board of ARCO, an interviewer once wrote, carries
no pencil with him to meetings; the caution and secrecy with which
oil-industry deliberations are carried out is legendary). But the circum-
stantial evidence is compelling.

The energy crisis comes at a time of stiffening public resistance to offshore drilling, hurried oil-shale leasing, and reckless stripmining. It

comes at a time of growing public uncase over the rush to open up one
nuclear Pandora's box after another, a time of growing doubt over
industry's pretense that nuclear power is clean and sale, when it is
neither now, or is it ever likely to be, safe enough. It comes just as
long-fought-for pollution controls have finally been achieved, and it
has already begun to eviscerate them. It comes at exactly the right
moment to panic Congress into approving the Alaska pipeline and
hamstringing the court's right to review the action.

The energy crisis has served big industry both as a vehicle for
putting independent operators out of business, and as an armored car
for attacking environmentalists. The environmentalists have long ar-
gued that the earth is a finite earth, that it imposes limits on growth.
that there are severe penalties if we exceed the limits very long They
were the first group to predict energy shortages, and are now being
blamed for them. The execution of the bearer of bad news is an old tite
with modern applications: if the ringing of an alarm system bothers
you, the energy crisis has rediscovered, then call the
treinists, or doomsayers, or Cassandras, or even alarmists
rip the system out. The crisis serves still another function
an unprecedented amount of capital into energy-cartel control,
In short, if the energy crisis was not designed by the oil energy
complex, it certainly has been very profitable for them in a number of
ways. If they did not dream it up, they should have.

pers ex-
and try to
moving

Far from really trying to get people to use less of a vanishing
resource, the energy people are lobbying for supertankers, superports,
and a frightfully hazardous liquefied-natural-gas transport combination
that will use energy faster. They want enough electricity for two
Americas by 1984. They have not lifted a finger to end the SST
program, which, were it operating as Mr. Nixon planned, would have
required the equivalent of five new Prudhoe Bay discoveries by the
year 2000, all to provide for the slight reduction in overall travel time
that the plane would allow supersonic travelers. They have been tenta-
tive at best about influencing Detroit to be less wasteful of oil. They
have been of no consequence in the effort to divert highway must funds
to good purpose, such as investing them in mass transit systems that
would move people and freight safely and well with far less energy.

While talking about shortages and conservation, they flare one half the world's emerging natural gas at the well.

In September 1970, a show me tour of the North Slope conducted
for conservationists by the industry left many unconvinced. In An-
chorage at the tour's conclusion, Phillip Berry, president of the Sierra
Club, asked the president of Atlantic Richfield, "Isn't it possible for
you in the oil industry to join the conservationists in persuading the
public to stop its extravagant use of oil?”

"That's not our business,

Thornton Bradshaw replied.
It is oil company business now, we are asked to believe
their deeds but by their ads.

not by

The energy-crisis ploy seems to have bepim following the Year of
the Environment, 1970 71, when President Nixon said that environ-
mental reform must come now or never." The energy industry saw
their development and marketing customs were endangered. They
could buy enormous amounts of advertising and, with it, buy the
influence over editorial content that advertising dependent media can-
not resist and still survive They could stage events, a requisite of
sophisticated public relations.

On June 26, 1972, under the head "ENERGY CRISIS! THE
INDUSTRY'S FRIGHT CAMPAIGN," Robert Sherrill asked in
The Nation:

....Where did the energy crisis come from? To a large extent, it
came out of the hats of the oil and gas industry's propagandists. Some
are more candid than others in peddling their message, none more so
than Wilbur Cross, senior editor on the publicity staff of Continental
Oil Company....

"Conoco was willing to go all the way, wrote Cross. 'We'll even
do typing, editing, and proofing for you, if you like! And in certain
instances we'll arrange transportation' on Conoco planes that happen
to be going in the right direction. This ingenious proposal was first
disclosed by Morton Mintz in The Washington Post.

"Among the "background texts, outlines, and subject ideas that we
have been developing,' said Cross, was, you guessed it, the energy

stories yet. But when the United States Supreme Court refused to
review the environmentalists' lower-court victory blocking the Alaska
pipeline, the industry was ready. Necessary legislation was drafted an
the pressure to pass it began to build. A mild crisis occurred. Ga.olme
ran short at the pumps as the vote in the House neared. Stories hostile
to the Canadian alterative appeared and stories friendly to it could not
find space. The gentle ARCO ads pointing out how good the envi-
ronment was made way for a strident full pager in the Washington Post
when it was time for the vote on an amendment requiring prompt study
of the Canadian route. The Canadian alternative is not a substitute, the
ad said. We need both pipelines. Let's get on with it!

The amendment was defeated and gasoline was back at the pumps
Aside from a few independent station operators who were forced to
close, few suffered.

Noting well that the way to a man's heart was through his pas tank
or a threat to his job, and with vaster battlegrounds than Alarka before
it, the energy industry broadened its campaign.

The Explorers Club, with oil-company presidents and other explor-
ers for energy prominent in its membership, sent out invitations June
15 to an "Energy Crisis Dinner" to be held November 28 5 ooullis
in the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria, the invitees
later -
to be addressed by the President of Exxon, by Vice-President Apnew.
and Jules Bergmann. Before the oil crisis developed, Mr. Agnew had
one of his own.

But the plaster of the crisis had not hardened yet, even though a
Middle East crisis was in the wind. On September 20 The New York
Times said:

ARAB ROLE DENIED IN OIL SHORTAGE

"The energy difficulties of the United States are not the result of
any Arab oil squeeze," at least up to now, John Lichtblau, head of
the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, said yesterday
one thing, our dependence on Arab oil is very small.

That was a calm voice from industry. William E. Simon was still calm in the Times on October 15:

U.S. CAN GET BY WITHOUT ARAB OIL, WASHINGTON SAYS

The government released figures today showing that the United

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States could get along without Arab oil in the event of a cut-off of supplies due to the Arab Israeli war.

The figures showed that the United States import about
million barrels a day of on direct from the Arab countries. This is
about 6 percent of the total daily consumption of 17 million barrels
a day.

William E. Simon, charman of the President's Oil Policy
Committee, said that the United States could reduce consumption
by as much as three million barrels a day if it was willing to make
the effort.

In addition to imports of oil from the Arab countries, the United
States also imports about 27 million barrels a day from the Cani-
bean and Latin America and 1.1 million banels a day from
Canada.

All the Arab oil did not stop commg when the Yom Kippur war
broke out indeed, many were to wonder how much really stopped
coming, what with two sets of government figures in sharp disagree-
ment. If it had all stopped coming, that would still be but a 6 percent
drop.

A mere 6 percent, however, would alarm no one. Canada supplied
the U.S. more than that and could help further if asked, not ignored.
But there was a new crisis. Watergate hearings and the suit by Com-
mon Cause were showing what an enormous contribution the oil com-
panies had made to the Committee to Re elect the President. Many of
the contributions were a violation of the Corrupt Practices Act. This
brought a slap on the wrist. If you have given $100,000 illegally, and
the fine is only $5,000, then you have given $105,000. Who would
notice the difference?

What else might be dug up? What contributions that were better
camouflaged than those discovered so far? Not just for the 1972 elec-
tions, but for 1970, and 1968? What commitments did these bring, as
for example, to forge ahead on the Alaska pipeline and damn the
wildlife, wilderness, fisheries, Eskimos, the public, and national sec-
urity? Watergate headlines were getting too much sensitive informa-
tion too far out into the open. Soon the investigation might be of the
Oilgate behind Watergate. Something dramatic was needed to change
the headlines.

A President of the United States, with his power to command une-
qualed attention, could initiate a crisis of his choosing. Beef, milk,
aspirin, whiskey. Comple a momentary delay in shipping schedules

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with a presidential announcement on all networks that a whiskey shor-
tage is imminent, and the liquor store shelves will be clear by nightfall
William F. Buckley, Jr. described the energy crisis as out has my to
get by with slightly more oil than we were using in 1970

So the less-than-six-percent drop in Arabian crude led to the an-
nouncement of crisis and the request that the public cut 15 percent. Let
there be energy self-sufficiency, and let the environment come second
Watergate embarrassment was off the front page immediately, and
stayed off, with an exception of 181⁄2 minutes.

זיין

Then, almost as if the timing were masterminded, Americans could
read full-page ads galore about how great a public resource luge
oil-company profits were. In magazine after magazine, they saw
Exxon's eight-page, four-color protestations of the innocence of
offshore drilling. On one Exxon color spread was a map entitled,
THE WORLD OF KNOWN OIL RESERVES. It showed 53
cent of our oil in the Middle East, 16 percent in Africa, 15 percent in
the Soviet Union and other communist countries, 5 percent in the
United States including Alaska, 2 percent in Canada, and 9 percent in
what's left of the world. For Exxon, the map demonstrated the need
for more offshore drilling. For President Nixon too, apparently. The
President and his oil-company advisors, after studying lipures like
those of the map, told the public in effect that, "If we can use our oil
up eight or more times as fast as the Arab countries will let us use their
oil up, we will be self-sufficient." For how long? Not for very, but get
it all under way before anyone figures that out. Conservationists saw a
contrary message in the same map, but it was not their map to attach
messages to, and they could not afford a competitive map of then own.

"Oil wells die, too.... When they do, they are shut in and disappear
without a trace on the landscape," said a Mobil Oil ad in 1974. Above
the words was a photograph of a simple rock cairn beneath Shiprock,
New Mexico. This fabulous disappearance of oil wells
tombstone
this simple
would have interested the millionaire ancher from
Duval County, Texas, who visited the Friends of the Earth office in
San Francisco in the same year. The rancher brought with him an
album full of a different kind of photograph. In it were views of
abandoned oil operations, bearing the signs of Mobil and most of the

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