The Society Responds to a Crisis

In 1973, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announced an embargo on shipments of petroleum to nations that supported Israel, which had been attacked by Egypt and Syria. The result was a worldwide crisis in the United States and other nations dependent on OPEC petroleum. Overnight, frustrated motorists were forced to spend hours waiting at filling stations to get some of the limited amount of gasoline available. Fistfights broke out among impatient motorists.

Zuckerman and I decided that the Society could make a useful contribution to public understanding of energy issues by holding a public forum that would bring together knowledgeable people from industry, government, and academia to discuss the complexities of the energy situation. We believed that such a timely meeting might also produce some badly needed revenue. The Society’s first conference had been financially successful and our membership had grown considerably since then.

To chair the forum, I recruited Anton Schmalz, a management consultant who had served on the committee that planned our 1971 conference. To assist Schmalz, we hired Nancy McLane, a former employee of the Sierra Club in California. She and her husband were deeply committed to protecting the natural environment, an issue closely linked to the world’s soaring consumption of petroleum and other natural resources.

By early 1974, Anton and Nancy were hard at work preparing for what we billed as a Special Forum on “Energy: Today’s Choices, Tomorrow’s Opportunities.” Anton enlisted an impressive group of speakers, including James Lee, president of the Gulf Oil Corporation; Congressman Mike McCormack, the only scientist in the U.S. House of Representatives; representatives of the energy producing companies; and a variety of people outside the energy industry, such as psychologists, who might provide unique perspectives on energy issues.

Schmalz’s biggest triumph was recruiting Gerald Ford to speak at the luncheon on the first day of the Forum. President Richard Nixon had just appointed Ford vice president of the United States, replacing Spiro Agnew. Furthermore, Nixon was expected to resign soon due to the Watergate scandal, so Ford would automatically become the next U.S. president!

But despite our extraordinary program, registrations fell far below expectations, and Zuckerman and I soon realized that the Society was headed for a serious financial loss. To make matters worse, the printers had failed to deliver on schedule the copies of the book on energy issues that we had promised the attendees.

I became sick with worry that we were headed for a complete disaster and began screaming at Schmalz to pressure the printers to finish the job. He finally bribed them with triple their normal wages to work at night. Still, the books did not arrive until half an hour before the conference opened. But at least we had succeeded in delivering on our promise to the attendees.

Energy: Today’s Choices, Tomorrow’s Opportunities was the first book that the Society had published, and it was an impressive production with statements from 48 experts and opinion leaders, including four U.S. senators and two future U.S. presidents (Ford and Jimmy Carter, who was then governor of Georgia).

The Forum opened as scheduled on the morning of April 24, 1974, and everything went smoothly until lunchtime when Ford — our star speaker — failed to appear. Since we had anticipated that possibility, we had a backup speaker, environmentalist Lester Brown, so Les began making his presentation.

While Les Brown was talking, Ford finally arrived and rushed to the platform, but his assistant, who was carrying the Great Seal of the Vice President of the United States, was stopped at the door to the hall by a zealous guard. The Great Seal is placed on the lectern whenever a U.S. vice president speaks, but due to the mischance Ford was forced to speak over the “Great Seal” of the World Future Society.

Ford gave a friendly but brief talk without saying anything memorable and then rushed away to his next appointment, but I was elated: Only seven years after the Society’s founding, a soon-to-be president of the United States had favored the World Future Society with a speech — and we didn’t have to pay him a dime.