Carter’s Energy Insecurity: The Political Economy of Coal in the 1970s

Upon taking office in 1977, President Jimmy Carter made energy a major public policy issue, pushing for the creation of a cabinet-level Energy Department. Still pondering the shock of the 1973 OPEC embargo and subsequent oil crisis, Carter sought to put the United States on a firmer long-term energy footing by reducing its dependence on OPEC oil. One of Carter’s main emphases was conservation, and he created a complex system of tax credits and deductions to encourage Americans to use less energy. However, recognizing that Americans would not drastically change daily consumption patterns overnight, his plans also included encouragement of domestic energy production in order to further decrease the nation’s reliance on foreign sources. One of the main components of the energy security plan was to encourage oil-fueled American electrical utilities to convert their equipment to burn coal instead, which the United States could produce domestically in abundance. This seemingly reasonable strategy proved highly difficult to execute successfully, since the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) strike in winter 1977–78 greatly impacted Carter’s plans.

A closer examination of this strike demonstrates that some of the problems Carter encountered in implementing his energy plan were tied to the inability to align the conflicting interests embedded within significant energy policy changes. A new labor contract proposed by coal employers would have slowed the growth of workers’ wages over the coming years and (more important) would have also curbed the union’s right to strike in the future. More than a hundred thousand miners walked off the job to protest the contract’s objectionable provisions. Though initially reticent to intervene and poison relations with organized labor, Carter eventually (and reluctantly) invoked the antiunion Taft-Hartley Act to try to force the miners back to work, an action that no U.S. president had taken against the UMWA in nearly thirty years. Most miners responded by simply ignoring the order, and an association of coal-mining companies launched a blistering public relations campaign against the UMWA in response. The unstable and contentious atmosphere generated by the longest coal-mining strike in U.S. history cast the administration’s oil replacement plans into serious doubt. Even when the lengthy (and often violent) strike was resolved in spring of 1978, national periodicals pointed to the heightened antipathy between union miners and coal companies as a potential problem reaching far into the future.

Examining the strike revises our understanding of U.S. energy politics in the late 1970s. Most narratives purporting to locate the roots of Carter’s energy policy problems focus on the 1977 bill creating the federal Department of Energy, especially Carter’s troubles interfacing with Congress. William Chafe claims disparagingly that “instead of going to Congress, enlisting the expertise and ideas of relevant committee chairs, and drafting bills that reflected their views, Carter created an energy task force made up of his experts.” He attributes Carter’s political failures to Congress’s determination to be neither strong-armed nor condescended to.¹ Somewhat more charitably to Carter, Garland A. Haas portrays him as a tragic hero who faced circumstances and opponents beyond his control, but still locates the roots of his energy policy problems in his relationship with the legislature. “[I]t is hard to imagine how any president facing the same issues and two Congresses as intractable” as those in the late 1970s, says Haas, “could have succeeded.”²

While Carter certainly had his problems with congressional relations, this is an unconvincing way to account for the Carter administration’s energy policy difficulties. Many historians have indeed made the opposite argument about the Lyndon Johnson administration, attributing LBJ’s domestic political successes to his refusal to leave policy in the hands of a fractious and disagreeable Congress. Though LBJ may have simply been better at applying political pressure to get legislators to do what he wanted, Carter’s comparatively less savvy capabilities still do not fully explain his challenges in governing. In fact, as John Dumbrell has pointed out, Carter’s ability to get major government reorganization legislation...