new discoveries or new technologies. The institutional structures and corporate interests that developed in support of that traditional path have persisted; the world view that was honed in that extraordinary quarter-century of rapid and easy economic growth is still reflected in most newspaper and magazine commentaries, still endorsed by most businessmen, politicians and economists. Among the wider public, however, the opinion polls appear to be telling a somewhat different story. During the 1970s, the vision of unlimited abundance gradually came to look like a mirage to many Americans, and the traditional consensus that placed economic growth above virtually all other values began to crumble. A New Sense of Limits A number of important themes emerge from recent changes in survey responses, none more striking that the dramatic disengagement from the traditional American faith in an unlimited future. From the late 1940s through the 1960s, the public consistently believed that the present was a better time for the country than the recent past and that the future would inevitably be better still. In 1964, for example, Americans gave the past of the United States (“about five years ago”) an average rating of 6.1 on a ten-point scale; they rated the present at 6.5, and the future (“about five years from now”) at 7.7. By 1978, that normal pattern had completely reversed itself, in a general decline that saw the past of the United States at 5.8, the present at 5.4, and the future at 5.3 (13). In February and March of 1979, the comparable figures were 5.7, 4.7 and 4.6 (14). A Labor Department study expressed the shock of that discontinuity: “What is new . . . and alarming is the finding that, unlike all previous measures, the public feels things are not going to get any better in the future” (cited in 15). With the advent of a new administration in Washington, more recent surveys suggest a slight recovery of the traditional American buoyancy. A. New York Times! CBS News poll (16) conducted in June of 1981 found 46% of Americans believing that the country will be better off in five years, compared to only 24% who were that cheerful in November of 1979. Nevertheless, the particular type of 1960s optimism seems unlikely to return in this century, for Americans have slowly come to recognize the genuine fragility of the U.S. resource and energy picture. The Reality of the Energy Crisis The evolving public perceptions of the energy problem reveal a reluctant learning process. Gallup polls periodically ask the open-ended question, “What is the most important problem facing this country today?” Between 1973 and 1977, energy was never mentioned by more than one-fourth of the public, except at the very height of the Arab oil embargo between December 1973 and February 1974 (17). Even in 1978, when most Americans had concluded that energy shortages were real and many were blaming their own wastefulness, sizable minorities were still deeply suspicious (18). They continued to be skeptical about the information that industry spokesmen and government representatives were providing. As Schneider (19) showed in his analysis of the polls at that time: Americans seem quite realistic about their own wasteful habits and about the limited availability of energy resources. But . . . they do not feel that these “facts” adequately explain the energy crisis. The energy crisis is perceived, like so many other ills these days, as an abuse of power.
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