VAN SUSTEREN: All right. People are concerned about their homes, but also gas prices. Gas keeps going up. You know, people have to commute. They can't live right next to their work. What can you do about gas prices, short-term, long-term?
MCCAIN: Short-term, not a lot. Short-term, we're too dependent on imported oil. Long-term — and I don't see very long — we can develop hybrid cars. We can develop a battery that'll take a car 100 miles. We can re-emphasize and dramatically increase nuclear power. We can do so many things in alternate energy to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil.
I mean, if you — I hear all the time people say, Well, wait a minute, that's going to be more expensive. I don't accept that in a second. The innovative strength and entrepreneurship of America, if you give them the incentives, they're going to go crazy. They're going to be able to — I was at a place with Governor Schwarzenegger not too long ago. You remember how thick solar panels are? Well, this was like a thin sheet of paper for solar panels that you could install. One of the problems with solar panels now, as we found out, the weight of them on a roof. So now they've developed a very thin sheet of solar panels, OK? You could — there's so much you can do.
VAN SUSTEREN: But when you were coming home from being a prisoner of war in 1973, we began this discussion. And it is now 2008. We're still talking about it. Why hasn't something really been done about it? I mean, this is no big surprise, as — you know, as we all woke up today, Oh, my God, we're dependent upon oil. This has been going on.
MCCAIN: Well, I hate to revisit ancient history with you, but we did have this oil embargo and people were in line for three and four hours. Solar panels sprung up all over Florida and all over America and Arizona, and we did all these things and we stimulated innovation. We gave people tax breaks for installing energy-saving devices, et cetera.
And then they dropped the price of oil, if you might recall. So everybody just said, Well, everything's fine now. It's not fine now. And if anybody can draw me a scenario where the price of a barrel of oil is going to go back down, I'd like to hear about it. I just don't believe it. The price of oil, when you've got India and China, two emerging consumers of oil, competing for a finite source, when we're not discovering that many new assets of — sources of oil, then it's a permanent problem. And we have to understand that it's a permanent problem. That's how it's different from the 1970s
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,346370,00.htmlI know McCain wasn't aware of the politics behind the gas crunch, but couldn't someone forward him the real reason...
The 1979 (or second) oil crisis in the United States occurred in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. Amid massive protests, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, fled his country in early 1979, allowing Ayatollah Khomeini to gain control. The protests shattered the Iranian oil sector. While the new regime resumed oil exports, it was inconsistent and at a lower volume, forcing prices to go up. Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations, under the presidency of Dr. Mana Alotaiba increased production to offset the decline, and the overall loss in production was about 4 percent. [2] However, a widespread panic resulted, driving the price far higher than would be expected under normal circumstances. In the United States, the Carter administration instituted price controls.[3]
In 1980, following the Iraqi invasion of Iran, oil production in Iran nearly stopped, and Iraq's oil production was severely cut as well.
After 1980, oil prices began a six-year decline that culminated with a 46 percent price drop in 1986. This was due to reduced demand and over-production, and caused OPEC to lose its unity. Oil exporters such as Mexico, Nigeria, and Venezuela expanded. The US and Europe got more oil from Prudhoe Bay and the North Sea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_energy_crisis