# How much closer could we be to energy-independence if we'd gone pedal to the metal in the 1970s? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 20, 2026, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-closer-could-we-be-to-energy-independence-if-wed-gone-pedal-to-the-metal-in-the-1970s/1029425 "2026-04-20T13:31:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2026, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-closer-could-we-be-to-energy-independence-if-wed-gone-pedal-to-the-metal-in-the-1970s/1029425/21 "2026-04-25T12:06:04Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I’m not convinced that the problem with public transit in much of the US was one of political will or funding, but rather that public transit has a stigma associated with poverty and racism in large parts of the US. Combine that with the fact that it’s less flexible and less convenient, and it becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Well, and you can’t go where you want to go when you want to go there is a bit of a problem. We are very used to the convenience of turning a key and going. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2026, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-closer-could-we-be-to-energy-independence-if-wed-gone-pedal-to-the-metal-in-the-1970s/1029425/22 "2026-04-25T12:17:04Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > Americans don’t want to be packed into crowded cities with tiny little houses and practically no yard. It’s not just a lack of investment that makes public transportation in the U.S. so poor. It’s the reality of our geography and our population density. This is kind of a false choice, though. If you look at something like the LIRR you can have heavier long-distance commuter rail feeding into the urban transit network. There are people in the Atlanta regional area who will commute 90 minutes from northern Georgia to work in downtown Atlanta, sitting in miserable gridlock for most of it. They’re not loading up on stuff from Costco. It’s just 1 passenger erasing 3 hours daily of their life and economic productivity because there’s no other way to commute from their big house and their big yard to the tall building downtown where their chair is. Nobody needs to lose their huge home and expansive golf-course-like lawn to solve this problem. They just need commuter rail running roughly along the interstate to the edge of the urban train network. Faster? Maybe yes, maybe no. Easier? Yes. Cheaper? Absolutely. The opposition comes from fears that a rail station would bring Those People into their town, or at least that the invested funds would benefit primarily Those People, and that’s all it is. This isn’t my supposition, it’s openly stated whenever the question is raised (at least around here). ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2026, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-closer-could-we-be-to-energy-independence-if-wed-gone-pedal-to-the-metal-in-the-1970s/1029425/23 "2026-04-25T12:21:04Z")
> [@bump](#): > > It’s only really consistently viable in built-up areas like the older US cities, where parking is a cast iron bitch, and traffic is atrocious. Otherwise driving one’s self quickly becomes more attractive. But the flip side of that is, subways (which can run on electricity and don’t interfere with other forms of transportation) are much, much cheaper and easier to build in new development than to add to an existing, established city. In new development, you can make a tunnel by just digging a ditch and covering it, while if you already have construction, you need to bore through, and make sure you’re not endangering any foundations. So the sweet spot for public transportation is somewhere where there isn’t much development right now, but where you’re confident there will be a lot, very soon. Then again, it’s also hard to build adequate surface roads in an already-established city, as anyone who’s ever driven in Boston (or most European cities) will recognize. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2026, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-closer-could-we-be-to-energy-independence-if-wed-gone-pedal-to-the-metal-in-the-1970s/1029425/24 "2026-04-26T01:38:22Z")
Well, these days Work-From-Home is the logical solution for a great many people in that situation. I mean, there’s _very_ little in my job that I couldn’t do from anywhere in the world, provided I was available at the requisite times for meetings and similar stuff. A big chunk of people’s driving isn’t commuting, even if a lot is. I mean, I probably put more miles on my vehicle today out running errands and getting lunch than I typically do in any two or three commuting days, and that’s _one_ Saturday from 9 am to about 4 pm. And while I can actually commute to work using light rail (it involves about a mile drive, half-mile walk, and inconvenient times, never mind crazy, stinky, homeless people), I could not have done but maybe one of my errands on public transportation today. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2026, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-closer-could-we-be-to-energy-independence-if-wed-gone-pedal-to-the-metal-in-the-1970s/1029425/25 "2026-04-26T01:45:29Z")
Sure, but the perfect is the enemy of the good. Let’s say that half of driving is commuting, and let’s say that half of people could commute via non-fossil-fuel means (telecommuting, mass transit, bicycle, whatever). That’d mean that we’d reduce fossil fuel consumption by 25%. That’s not a total solution to the problem, but it’s certainly not nothing, either. And that’s just one step that we can take. Put enough of these partial solutions together, and we just might manage to make a full solution. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2026, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-closer-could-we-be-to-energy-independence-if-wed-gone-pedal-to-the-metal-in-the-1970s/1029425/26 "2026-04-26T23:58:06Z")
It doesn’t matter how hard you push the pedal, if you don’t know which direction you are steering. Yes, the government could have put a lot more money into research, but in the 1970s it was not obvious which research directions were going to work out. A lot of this stuff has been sequential, and the new research directions only became viable and interesting as the result of previous research. If we had made a massive investment in windmills in 1875, we would have been massively investing in low-speed, low-wind windmills. Which would have been abandoned at the point where they needed maintenance. We could have ramped up our investment in thermal solar, with more and bigger test projects – which would have come to the same end as the smaller and fewer test projects. Big fields of massively expensive active-reflector solar projects, instead of small fields of massively expensive active-reflector solar projects. Lots more small-turbine river hydro-electric systems, which we would now be pulling out to hopefully help fish return. I don’t comment on fission or fusion. If we’d gone pedal to the metal in the 1870’s, it’s not clear to me which pedal we would have been pushing. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2026, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-closer-could-we-be-to-energy-independence-if-wed-gone-pedal-to-the-metal-in-the-1970s/1029425/27 "2026-04-27T02:31:20Z")
You’re not wrong, but it was at least a bit more clear in the 1970s than the 1870s. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2026, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-closer-could-we-be-to-energy-independence-if-wed-gone-pedal-to-the-metal-in-the-1970s/1029425/28 "2026-04-27T02:34:27Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > If we had made a massive investment in windmills in 1875, we would have been massively investing in low-speed, low-wind windmills Do you mean 1975? ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2026, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-closer-could-we-be-to-energy-independence-if-wed-gone-pedal-to-the-metal-in-the-1970s/1029425/29 "2026-04-27T04:11:21Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > If we had made a massive investment in windmills in 1875, we would have been massively investing in low-speed, low-wind windmills. Which would have been abandoned at the point where they needed maintenance. Actually, there were considerable number of windmills in the 1870s. They were mostly used to pump water, I believe. And they were not abandoned when they needed maintenance. As far as wind turbines, towards the end of the Carter Admin, around 1979, some federal agency set up an experiment of two of them in the Columbia Gorge, east of Portland. They learned a lot about the best way to build them. For example, they learned the best number of blades was three. A few years later, during the early Reagan Admin, they were removed and all they learned was tossed away. At least tossed by Americans. Europeans took what they learned and started to build wind turbines elsewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2026, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-closer-could-we-be-to-energy-independence-if-wed-gone-pedal-to-the-metal-in-the-1970s/1029425/30 "2026-04-29T01:20:29Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Do you mean 1975? Yes. > [@dtilque](#): > > And they were not abandoned when they needed maintenance. Oddly enough, although It was not what I intended to mention, yes, they were thrown away when they needed maintenance. Not the first time they needed maintenance, but mostly before 1975. The typical lifecycle of a 4-blade european-style windmill ended with a strong storm, and the equipment was not replaced. The same for later multi-blade American windmills. ---
**Author:** ![Al128](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/al128/32/16541_2.png) [@Al128](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Al128)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2026, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-closer-could-we-be-to-energy-independence-if-wed-gone-pedal-to-the-metal-in-the-1970s/1029425/31 "2026-04-29T10:35:49Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > The cost decline in solar is uneven. Prices declined by 90% in the late 70s and early 80s. Then were very slow to decline for 20 years, then declined rapidly from 2007 to 2013 (going from $5/watt to $0.83/watt in 6 years) > > **However I have no idea how much of that was due to other technologies that just happened to make solar easier, or direct investment in solar itself** The answer to this question is CHINA ---
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2026, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-closer-could-we-be-to-energy-independence-if-wed-gone-pedal-to-the-metal-in-the-1970s/1029425/32 "2026-04-29T11:36:51Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > Americans don’t want to be packed into crowded cities with tiny little houses and practically no yard. It’s not just a lack of investment that makes public transportation in the U.S. so poor. It’s the reality of our geography and our population density. In complex systems, though, actions can have far-reaching (and sometimes unpredictable) effects. As a simple experiment, consider how true “Americans don’t want to be packed into crowded cities with tiny little houses and practically no yard” might be if gas suddenly shot up to $15/gal. Or $25/gal. Or $100/gal. At some point, Americans would happily give up all of this open space and freedom in order to, you know, pay for food so they could keep on living. There’s nothing uniquely American about our love for spreading everything out, other than that by random chance most of our cities happened to be established when the economics made “spreading out” not only feasible but, frankly, favorable. Now we must ask, why were the economics tilted that way? There’s a long history of greed, corruption, and short-sightedness that we don’t need to get into here. But suffice it to say, if we were able to give the citizens of 1973 a crystal ball to see 100 years into the future, might they have done things differently? Probably not, because humans don’t seem to give 2 shits about future generations, but we can dream. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2026, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-closer-could-we-be-to-energy-independence-if-wed-gone-pedal-to-the-metal-in-the-1970s/1029425/33 "2026-05-05T01:11:59Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > So the sweet spot for public transportation is somewhere where there isn’t much development right now, but where you’re confident there will be a lot, very soon. So, start digging the Austin Subway now? (Actually, there’s lots of development already, but there’s plenty more coming). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-closer-could-we-be-to-energy-independence-if-wed-gone-pedal-to-the-metal-in-the-1970s/1029425.md?page=1)