4. From Energy Poverty to Energy Extremism
I
n 1970, the American space program completed its seventh manned
mission, and the Soviets landed a robot on the Moon. The
ARPANET— the precursor to the internet— connected computers
across North America. Doctors began using chemotherapy to stifle can-
cer. US life expectancy had grown from under sixty in 1930 to seventy-
one by 1970, buoyed by improvements in public health and per capita
income, which reached $5,000 per year in 1970, equivalent to $30,000 in
- America’s middle class spent its weekends bowling, sipping Har-
vey Wallbangers at tiki bars, and guffawing over the antics on TV’s
Laugh- In.
In Oman, the advancements of the developed world sounded like sci-
ence fiction. The capital city, Muscat, ringed by thick stone walls, had
its gates locked after sundown.^1 Anyone wandering the city after dark
was required to carry a kerosene lantern at eye level, for purposes of
police identification.^2 The creeping poverty and isolation that afflicted
Oman in the 1870s had ossified by 1970. Subsistence farmers still hacked
out their timeless existence on narrow mountain terraces or on the
coastal plains, using five- thousand- year- old falaj irrigation channels to
sustain crops. Yearly per capita income was $350.^3 Even among urban
Omanis, education beyond the Quran was nonexistent.^4 The country of
700,000 counted just three schools, supporting nine hundred children.
