Chapter 29 Notes
An Era of Limits
- Economic Downturn of early 1970s saw employment, productivity, and growth decline
- High inflation from Vietnam
- Americans considered limits to growth and expansion
- Energy Crisis
- US became dependent on cheap oil from Persian Gulf
- When Middle East got rid of colonialism, demanded money for fields forming
cartel or business association formed to control prices→Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
- Egypt and Syria invaded Israel for land, and Israel remained only after an
emergency US airlift
- In response, Arab states declared oil embargo in 1973 and Gas jumped by 40%
and heating oil by 30%
- Congress created national speed limit of 55 mph to conserve fuel and Americans
bought more fuel efficient cars
- Set off raging inflation exemplified by food raising by 20%
- Environmentalism
- Energy Crisis spread idea that resources have limits which was also at core of
environmentalism
- Biologist Rachel Carson published Silent Spring which analyzed the pesticide
DDT’s toxic impact on food chains
- Events like fighting off dams that would flood grand canyon, offshore drilling
spilling millions of gallons of oil off coast of Santa Barbara, Cuyahoga River near
Cleveland burst into flames because of chemicals, and airport that threatened
wildlife in Florida made environmentalism a mass movement creating Earth Day
- Environmental Protection Agency
- Environmental Protection Agency was bipartisan bill with wide support
requiring developers to file impact statements assessing their project’s
effect on ecosystem
- Republicans and Democrats agreed but Corporations and workers
opposed regulations believing that their jobs were threatened dividing
nation
- Nuclear Power
- Seemed like godsend with oil crisis because didn’t produce pollutants
- However, meltdown and dumping of waste would generate toxic levels of
radioactivity
- In 1979, reactor core at the Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania almost
melted down
- No new plants were authorized
- Economic Transformation
- Government spending on Vietnam and Great Society created federal deficit and
high inflation
- US share in world trade dropped from 32 percent in 1955 to 18 percent in 1970
- And 9 European countries surpassed US in GDP pe capita
- Problem was transformation from industrial-manufacturing to
postindustrial-service as US produced less cars and appliance and more financial
services like healthcare and low-paying service jobs
- 1970s saw stagflation of high inflation , low consumer demand, and high
unemployment
- Nixon tried to solve it by imposing price and wage control and removed US from
gold standard
- Ford urged Americans to cut food waste and do more with less but was unpopular
- Deindustrialization
- US steel industry did not have competition, so didn’t improve outdated
equipment
- When Germany and Japan built updated facilities, that steel flooded in and
US steel began to dismantle
- Organized Labor in Decline
- Deindustrialization threw b...
