what was the energy crisis?

Answer 1

Don't you mean what IS the energy crisis? The crisis is the fact that 95% of us use fuel and power that will not be around much longer. Soon our supply will run out and we will have to try and rely on other sourses of energy, which we really have yet to discorver and perfect.

Answer 2

The use of energy has always been a crisis if you view it from its availability and cost of its use to the ultimate consumers.

The use of wood to create fire is a form of energy location and use. When the wood is near and easily accessible, its distribution and cost makes it available to a wide range of users. As availability becomes more difficult, cost to the User increases. At some point other sources of energy are able to compete. Therefore the move to coal.

You can chart these changes in energy and with each “change” there is a wider distribution to the members of society with increasing lowering of costs. That is, until new factors enter the equation. For instance, in our time pollution from energy use becomes a factor as does new sources that are increasingly difficult to reach.

When I was young, we used wood on the farm for heat and cooking. Electricity was available from coal fired generating plants. Auto fuel came from the petroleum industry. By the end of World War II increasing numbers of products from the crude oil industry became available. We had natural gas to the farm (heat and cooking), availability of auto fuel increased with lowing prices, and electrical generating plants increasingly changed to oil. Availability increased and cost to User decreased.

Today petroleum sources are becoming increasingly difficult to reach, costs are increasing, and pollution output is becoming more important. In addition, political pressures also add new incentives external to the logic of energy use. As cost rise, new approaches are becoming viable. For example, new approaches to mining coal are making it more accessible and new processing methods are making it very clean. Shale oil is another source which has been looked for many years and new methods make it available at a cost of $8 to $13 per barrel. A few years ago cold fusion was found as not viable, the intervene years are demonstrating that it may be very viable. Energy derived from wind is spreading and improving. Also energy derived from water such as Ocean tides is looking increasingly helpful.

My point is that there is not (nor has there even been) and energy crisis. Changing energy, developing energy, distributing energy is always going on and are always challenges but not a crisis.

Finally, we are not running out of energy. Known reserves (although increasingly difficult to reach) represent at least 200 years of projected use. Coal (along with increasingly clean processing methods) has a life expectantly of near 500 years just from known reserves within the United States.

Getting all jacked out of shape about some mythological (political) energy crisis doesn’t help anyone. Supporting new research and new development for new answers will continue the availability of energy to individuals at lessening cost in ways that today we can’t even begin to guess at. One can either parrot the Chicken Little cry of doom or, one can get in the game to find new answers.

Answer 3

In the 1970s, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (countries that make oil) put an embargo on the US and we had no access to foreign oil. this led to a steep increase in the cost of gas and gas rationing. There used to be long lines at the gas pumps and no one could travel far because we only had so much gas to use.