What Happened?

It is the 30th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state. It has been a busy couple of years for 30th & 40th anniversaries of events that have shaped our world and are now recognized as pivotal in US and world history.

Tet Offensive, 1968

Assassinations of Dr. King & Robert Kennedy

Race & Anti-War demonstrations

1968 Democratic National Convention riots in Chicago

The "Chappaquiddick" car accident that ended Teddy's chances at ever being president

Apollo 11

Woodstock

Altamont

Kent State

This is just a short list of the events to which I am referring and is not meant to be a thorough timeline.

In 1973-74 I was getting ready to obtain my first drivers license and was taking "Driver's Ed" through the high school I was attending. The OPEC oil embargo was going on during this period as well and just as I was getting my license to drive, the price of gasoline more than doubled. Gas prices went from 28-30 cents per gallon to 60-65 cents per gallon in only a few weeks. I remember having to get up really early in the morning, like 4am early, so I could go with my mom or dad to the local gas station to line up to buy as much fuel as the station would allow. Many times there was a limit of 10 gallons per customer. This was over and above the fact that there was a restriction on buying gas based on your license plate number, "even/odd" days and no gas sold on Sundays at all.

The oil disaster in the Gulf of Texaco brought this to mind as I was thinking how it might have been different if we'd have learned the lessons would have ended our dependence on foreign energy sources, if not completely ended our fossil fuel consumption at least in the US. Could we have done it? Had we, as a nation, determined that we would never let such a thing happen again and if we had spend the 35 years since developing what we call today the "alternative" energy sources of wind, solar, hydroelectric, bio-diesel, etc. it is my firm belief that the US would be 100% energy independent today.