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The president even urged Americans to lower thermostats in homes, offices and factories by at least six degrees Fahrenheit. Anticipating a lukewarm reaction, Nixon tried to ease tensions. “By the way, my doctor told me that at 66 to 68 degrees (18 to 20 degrees Celsius), you’re actually healthier than at 75 to 78 degrees (23 to 26 degrees Celsius), if that’s any relief,” he added.
A month later, while signing the year-long daylight saving time law, Nixon said other measures would require “inconvenience and sacrifice.” On the other hand, he said that changing the time “will lead to the preservation of the equivalent of 150,000 barrels of oil per day during the winter months, and will only mean minimal inconvenience and will require equal participation from everyone.”
Prices at US gas stations rose by 50% during the winter months. In his 2009 BBC radio series “America: Empire of Freedom,” Professor David Reynolds said: “Admittedly, at around 60 cents a gallon, the cost was not crippling by today’s standards. But for a country that assumed cheap gas was America’s birthright, the oil crisis was a real shock.” Reynolds pointed out that an opinion poll conducted in December revealed signs of panic, as people were said to fear the country would run out of energy. “That was nonsense, of course,” he said. However, although domestic production met two-thirds of US needs, the other third came mostly from the Middle East, and “rising prices combined with general panic created a crisis.”
The Second Dark Age
Even before the shock of the oil crisis, the United States was already suffering from fuel shortages. Humphreys reported in May 1973 that “gasoline in the world’s most fuel-hungry nation is in short supply.” To add color, the report contained part of an ad for former US oil giant Amoco presented by Johnny Cash, who said: “It is hard to believe that our great country is suffering from an energy crisis, but it is.” The country star urged motorists to slow down to save gasoline. “You’ll get there,” he promised, “and there will be more gasoline for everyone.” In another Amoco advertisement, he talked about “a new pioneering spirit in America today, the spirit of environmental preservation.”
Nixon echoed Cash’s message of lowering the temperature by six degrees at home and slowing down on the highway. What wasn’t part of the Man in Black’s advertising tirade was year-round daylight saving time, a measure sure to be unpopular with many in his heartland audience. While time zones are a human invention, cows don’t know what time it is, so the extra hour of winter darkness in the morning presented an additional challenge for farmers.
Although Nixon was mired in the Watergate scandal at the time, he may have learned from the UK’s experience a few years earlier, when clocks were introduced as usual in the spring of 1968 and then not postponed until the fall of 1971. The lasting image was of children wearing fluorescent badges walking to school in the dark. While some companies involved in trade with continental Europe expressed their appreciation for being in the same time zone, the measure was not welcomed by those who had to operate abroad. It was least popular in the far north of Scotland, where some people had to wait until 09:45 to catch their first glimpse of the winter sun.
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