30

Running on Empty,

1975–1991

Running on Empty: 1975–1991

CONTENTS

■William Eggleston, whom many critics regard as “the father of modern color

art photography,” gives a stark rendering of a closed Arco gas station, from his

collectionTroubled Waters(1980).

Source: Courtesy Eggleston Artistic Trust, Cheim & Read, New York.

797

Then, in 2010, a British-owned oil rig forty miles off

the coast of Louisiana exploded, killing eleven workers

and releasing millions of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf

of Mexico. The oil spill was the worst environmental dis-

aster in the nation’s history. Obama issued a moratorium

on new offshore drilling projects.

For much of the twentieth century, the high cost

and environmental risks of offshore oil drilling

exceeded the projected profits of such ventures. But

that changed in 1970s when the flow of crude oil to

the United States and the West was cut off; the price

of oil soared. Now offshore drilling made economic

sense. Because most of the untapped oil lay beneath

the oceans, offshore drilling platforms were built in

the North Sea, off the coast of Brazil, and in the Gulf

of Mexico.

For a nation dependent on the automobile, the

1970s oil shortage plunged the economy into a deep

recession. Factories were closed and workers laid off. A

new conservatism prevailed, part of a reaction against

the costly measures of LBJ’s Great Society. The need for

cheap oil, moreover, pushed the United States deeper

into the labyrinth of Middle Eastern politics. War

would follow. ■

■The Oil Crisis

■Ford as President

■The Fall of South Vietnam

■Ford versus Carter

■The Carter Presidency

■A National Malaise

■Stagflation: The

Weird Economy

■“Constant Decency”

in Action

■The Iran Crisis: Origins

■The Iran Crisis:

Carter’s Dilemma

■The Election of 1980

■Reagan as President

■Four More Years

■“The Reagan Revolution”

■The New Merger Movement

■“A Job for Life”: Layoffs

Hit Home

■Corporate Restructuring

■Rogue Foreign Policy

■Assessing the

Reagan Revolution

■The Election of 1988

■George H. W. Bush

as President

■The Collapse of Communism

in Eastern Europe

■The War in the Persian Gulf

■Deficits

■American Lives:

Bill Gates

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