66UNNATURALLY COOLusual buttoned- up suit. The president’s choice of haberdashery was no
accident. He had a message for Americans coping with the twin chal-
lenges of an extremely cold winter and high, postembargo energy prices:
change your behavior. The president urged his countrymen to cut their
use of energy by turning down the thermostat and donning a sweater.
“The amount of energy being wasted which could be saved is greater
than the total energy that we are importing from foreign countries,”
Carter admonished, leaning forward in his armchair. He asked utilities
to “promote conservation and not consumption” and told companies to
shoulder the burden alongside citizens. Thrift and efficiency were his
buzzwords. “There is no way that I, or anyone else in the government,
can solve our energy problems if you are not willing to help,” the presi-
dent said. “All of us must learn to waste less energy. Simply by keeping
our thermostats, for instance, at 65 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees
at night we could save half the current shortage of natural gas.” Carter
was pushing on an open door. High prices were already undermining
oil demand in the United States, inspiring conservation and efficiency.
People not only endured uncomfortable indoor temperatures, but they
insulated their homes and invested in more efficient capital equipment,
swapping the gasoline- guzzling Cadillac for a fuel- sipping Toyota.
The 1979 Iranian Revolution sent oil prices soaring again, and this
reinforced the behavioral changes already underway. Fuel switching
became a global movement. Homeowners scrapped furnaces that burned
expensive heating oil and switched to natural gas. Where gas was
unavailable, they turned to woodstoves. Governments around the world
did the same thing on a macro scale. Much of Western Europe scram-
bled for nuclear power. France leveraged the brainpower of its engineer-
ing class, enabling it to generate 80 percent of its electricity via nuclear
reactor. Japan and South Korea also went nuclear. America did too, while
revitalizing coal and natural gas. Solar panels began to appear on roof-
tops, including that of the Carter White House.
When the dust settled from the Iranian Revolution, world oil demand
had dropped by 10 percent, the largest amount in modern history, from
64m b/d in 1979 to under 58m b/d in 1983. The biggest changes in demand
didn’t stem from temporary adjustments of the thermostat but from