Search For Alternatives
The energy crisis led to greater interest in renewable energy and spurred research in solar power and wind power. It also led to greater pressure to exploit North American oil sources, and increased the West's dependence on coal and nuclear power. This included increased interest in mass transit.
In Australia, heating oil ceased being considered an appropriate winter heating fuel. This often meant that a lot of oil-fired room heaters that were popular from the late-1950s to the early-1970s were considered outdated. Gas-conversion kits that let the heaters burn natural gas or propane were introduced.
For the handful of industrialized nations that were net energy exporters, the effects of the oil crisis were very different. In Canada the industrial east suffered many of the same problems of the United States. In oil-rich Alberta, however, there was a sudden and massive influx of money that quickly made it the richest province in the country. The federal government attempted to correct this imbalance through the creation of the government-owned Petro-Canada and later the National Energy Program. These efforts produced a great deal of anger in the west producing a sentiment of alienation that has remained a central element of Canadian politics to this day. Overall the oil embargo had a sharply negative effect on the Canadian economy. The economic malaise in the United States easily crossed the border and increases in unemployment, and stagflation hit Canada as hard as the United States despite Canadian fuel reserves.
The Brazilian government implemented a very large project called "Proálcool" (pro-alcohol) that mixed ethanol with gasoline for automotive fuel.
Ironically, Israel was one of the few countries not affected by the embargo, since it was able to satisfy its own energy demand by extracting oil from the Sinai. But to supplement Israel's over-taxed power grid, Harry Zvi Tabor, the father of Israel's solar industry, developed the prototype for a solar water heater now used in over 90% of Israeli homes.
Read more about this topic: 1973 Oil Crisis
Famous quotes containing the words search for, search and/or alternatives:
“The house a woman creates is a Utopia. She can’t help it—can’t help trying to interest her nearest and dearest not in happiness itself but in the search for it.”
—Marguerite Duras (b. 1914)
“His life itself passes deeper in nature than the studies of the naturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the naturalist. The latter raises the moss and bark gently with his knife in search of insects; the former lays open logs to their core with his axe, and moss and bark fly far and wide. He gets his living by barking trees. Such a man has some right to fish, and I love to see nature carried out in him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Clearly, society has a tremendous stake in insisting on a woman’s natural fitness for the career of mother: the alternatives are all too expensive.”
—Ann Oakley (b. 1944)