Since textbooks do not discuss ideas, it is no surprise that they fail to
address the changes in American thinking resulting from World War I, World
War II, the Holocaust, or Stalinism, let alone from developments in
anthropological or biological theory. By 1973, however, another problem with
progress was becoming apparent: the downside risks of our increasing
dominance over nature. Environmental problems have grown more ominous
every year.
In the 1980s and 1990s, most books at least mentioned the energy crises
caused by the oil embargo of 1973 and the Iran-Iraq War in 1980. No worries,
however: textbook authors implied that both crises found immediate solutions.
“As a result” of the 1973 embargo, Triumph of the American Nation told us,
“Nixon announced a program to make the United States independent of all
foreign countries for its energy requirements by the early 1980s.” Ten pages
later, in response to gas rationing in 1979, “Carter set forth another energy
plan, calling for a massive program to develop synthetic fuels. The long-range
goal of the plan was to cut importation of oil in half.” No mention in 1979 of
Nixon’s 1973 plan, which had failed so abjectly that our dependence on
foreign oil had spiraled upward, not downward.^22 No mention that Congress
never even passed most of Carter’s 1979 plan, inadequate as it was. Virtually
all the textbooks adopted this trouble-free approach. “By the end of the Carter
administration, the energy crisis had eased off,” Land of Promise reassured its
readers. “Americans were building and buying smaller cars.” “People
gradually began to use less gasoline and conserve energy,” echoes The
American Tradition.
If only it were that simple! Between 1950 and 1975 world fuel consumption
doubled, oil and gas consumption tripled, and the use of electricity grew
almost sevenfold.^23 Since then things have only grown worse. Meanwhile,
world oil production has reached a plateau, as M. K. Hubbert predicted it
would decades ago. In 1994 I wrote, “If our sources of energy are not infinite,
which seems likely since we live on a finite planet, then at some point we will
run up against shortages.” By 2007 these shortages have begun to manifest
themselves, and the dislocations will prove enormous. A century ago farming
in America was energy self-sufficient: livestock provided the fertilizer and
tillage power, farm families did the work of planting and weeding, wood
heated the house, wind pumped the water, and photosynthesis grew the crops.
Today American farming relies on enormous amounts of oil, not only for