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Is Carter's program fair? Most Americans seem uncertain — dubious. Many wonder whether their own sacrifice might simply be negated by the neighbor who fails to follow suit. A common complaint is that of Rita Gibson, a Boston delicatessen owner: "The guys with money will still be able to afford as much gas as they want. Only the little guys will suffer." Asks Peggy Matthews, a New York public relations executive: "Why should some poor apartment dweller sit and shiver when all the office buildings in Manhattan are shining brightly all night long?" Contends Werner Uebersax, a Catonsville (Md.) College professor, who would prefer gas rationing: "What happens when you raise taxes is that the rich aren't affected, the poor are subsidized one way or another —and guess who gets it in the neck?"
Though surprisingly subdued so far, regionalism is an obstacle of unknown seriousness to the Carter program. Protests Pat Wakefield, mayor of Hunter's Creek, an affluent Houston suburb: "There's nothing fair about controlled gas prices at the same time as those people in the East and North are refusing to permit drilling in their states for gas and oil."
Finally, what are the implications for the technological society? Carter likened the present need for energy conservation to earlier shifts from burning wood to coal, then later from coal to oil and natural gas. Columbia University Historian Henry Graff sees the current crisis more grandly, calling it "the Pearl Harbor of the Industrial Revolution." He is not certain that Americans, more than people anywhere else, are ready to meet the challenge. "Heroic periods are easier to read about than to live through," he notes.
In Graffs gloomy view, "Man is by nature a predatory animal—he uses what's available." He contends that waste has been built into the values of an ever-expanding American economy. In the past, technology provided answers for the problems it created. Now Graff fears that there may be no wondrous new energy source when the old forms run out.
Carter, a politician with the problem-solving mind of an engineer, is confident that any such pessimistic view is wrong. To doubt that new technological breakthroughs are ahead is essentially a failure of the imagination. Biologist Barry Commoner is one of many scientists who believe that new energy sources will be developed. Even now, he claims, "solar energy could reduce our energy budget by 20%."
Indeed, Carter's whole energy plan is designed as a way of reaching that future age of new energy sources without setting, nation against nation—and regions within the U.S. against each other. Whatever the uncertainties along the path Carter is blazing, not to set out at all would be the least rational of all alternatives.