The Current Energy Crisis is Taking the U.S. to a Cusp of Profound Change -- 2026

 I lived through the Oil Shocks of 1973 and 1979, have taught about them in university classes for many years, but only now am beginning to understand just how important they were in American History. You can read about them and their impact on the automobile in my 2nd edition of my Automobile American Life, I don't want to recount those events here but rather brainstorm (as my granddaughter likes to say) about what might happen in the near future, assuming that this present gas price spike and availability will end within the next six months.  
What might this period of enormous instability lead to?

1. Price for gasoline may drop some, but they will never return to the levels 0f 2024-6. In 1974, the price of gas did not return to 30 cents per gallon, er even close to it. In 1981, the price of gas did not return to the cost of gas in the summer of 1979. Gasoline will be more costly, more people will buy electric cars, but overall it will cost more to live, and income inequality will only increase. Couple that with AI adoption and efficiencies and uncertainty over the future of work can only be exacerbated.

2. American global power can only decline further.  In the early 1980s, Historian Louis Galambos authored the book America at Middle Age. Post-2026 one can readily write a book on America "in retirement" from its role as a Global leader. Just flip historian Stephen Ambrose's seminal work on post-1945 and the rise of American global leadership on its head.

3. Regional transitions in America will be as pronounced as the "southernization" of America in the 1970s and 80s. Where migration will go chasing after opportunity is only to be guessed now.

4. "Small is Beautiful" will be followed far more than what happened after the publication of a book by that title in the 1970s. Life will also revert to analog in revulsion of AI and the false promises of the digital.

5. The outrageous wealth of the present will no longer be a characteristic of the American scene. The fetish of a constant and never-ending economic growth will end. 

In sum, the next few years will be a wild ride.