"If, then, you ask me to put into one sentence the cause of that recent, rapid, and enormous change and the prognosis for the achievement of human liberty, I should replay, it is found in the discovery and utilization of the means by which heat energy can be made to do man's work for him." Robert A. Millikan: Freedom, edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen, Harcourt Brace, 1940.

Most American are calling it the energy crisis. In Japan, England and in Europe they are calling it the same thing. The President has made it 'perfectly clear' that it is going to affect every American in business, in their personal life, in unemployment, and in every walk of life within the economy that is already beset with challenges that portend the slowdown and/or the recession that the stock market appears to be so prophetic-like as our barometer.

You're damned right. It is a crisis. A national crisis.

Now almost everyone knows that the men in congress and the allied leaders from the President on down in Washington have a responsibility to act. Well, they have and are acting. But in the most negative way imaginable, in my opinion.

The energy crisis is just as real and penetrating to each of us as any war or police action we have faced. Even in World War II or the Korean and Viet Nam conflicts we did not have blackouts, kids sent home on an abbreviated school day from cool rooms or restrictions on how fast we could drive whatever we were going.

If it was another tragic war you can bet your buns that we would be acting positively. We'd say 'screw the Arabs and the Middle East that have cut off our crude,' We'd be converting automobile assembly lines into tank lines within months as we did in the early forties. Priorities would be given to the transition. You can bet that there would be no shortage of bombs and ammo for a moment.

I feel firmly convinced that we have faced a condition that can fairly be compared with a possible World War III.

This is a national emergency.

Now can someone please tell me just why we should not open up the necessary California and off-shore fields for crude at least for a few years until the Alaska pipeline is completed and/or when the Middle East decides they still want to make a profit from Americans and start to again accept the Yankee dollar?

Just why didn't we appropriate the x-number of millions to establish a rush project for a national refinery (if free enterprise refuses to do it) with every priority including the tooling, commandeering engineering know-how, even if we have to put them in uniform and insure getting the job done within months from now?

Why can't we meet this crisis positively and get this job done now. America is the richest nation in the world, the most industrialized, and moving with a reputation that has been earned in tackling every major problem that faces us with zeal. We have been able to meet, finance and execute solutions to crises before; why not now.

It is time now for an expeditious positive movement to treat the energy shortage as another national emergency; and with dispatch for an immediate solution with the fuel we need to operate our economy rather than the current attitude to 'cool it' for the next four or five years.

If your congressmen have not thought of it this way, you just might want to send him a light blub (unlit, of course) with a note. He might find it a refreshing thought.