Nope, have to disagree. There is nothing preventing the US from developing an energy self-sufficient culture with a POD of October 1973 with the right impetus and public/political will. The US is still produces 5.3 million barrels per day of oil and lease condensate. With a POD more than 35 years in the past and the kind of changes I and others here (especially TheMann) have laid out, it's entirely possible.
We'll have to disagree then. While I think the US could be far more energy self-sufficient, I don't believe it could be 100% self sufficient.
That STILL uses half the per capita energy as the United States. The source doesn't really matter.
Yes, Europe uses far less energy per capita then the US, has far more nuclear generation capacity, and, thanks to population densities, has a more robust public transportation network. Europe still isn't energy self sufficient though and, with her major pipelines in Russian hands, the source of her oil and gas matters a great deal.
And every climate zone benefits from superinsulation to either heat or cool a structure. That's construction technology 101.
It's also Construction Technology 101 to recognize that they types of insulation used will vary by climate as will the need for air exchange between the building's interior and the outside.
One size it not going to fit all.
Perhaps in your state under your Public Utilities Commission rules, but certainly not everywhere, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. Electric utilities in many states, including here in the Northeast, did not like the idea of being forced to buy power from non-utility generating sources that were not under their control.
I'll explain this one more time. The electrical generation industry has been a huge part of my career for over thirty years now so I'm bringing a certain perspective to your proposals.
You could always sell excess electricity back to the grid. What some utilities did however was purchase it at a punitive rate. Niagara Mohawk was an example of that. The utilities deliberately offered less for each kwh offered, and then replaced those kwhs by purchasing more expensive kwhs from other sources at a loss, in order to maintain their generation monopolies.
The big break in co-gen in the 1980s occurred when legislation forbid this underpricing strategy and made the utilities purchased co-gen produced kwhs at a
premium. While that made co-gen processes somewhat more attractive, the final piece that sparked the co-gen boom were partnership efforts like those begun by Duke Power.
Industries are naturally loathe to invest huge capital sums in equipment and processes with which they have no experience and running turbo-generator sets falls into that category. Partnerships between businesses already producing electricity and those interested in producing electricity removed the the equally troublesome "skill set" hurdle.
If the federal government can make states pass speed limit laws...
The feds bribed/bullied those speed limit laws by tying them to highway funds and even then there were allowed exceptions in the western states. One size is not going to fit all.
... just as my state forced all local towns to draw up comprehensive development plans.
The fed's authority over states is far less than a state's authority over the cities and towns within it. There is no "Home Rule" statute on the federal level so, unlike as with states and cities/towns, the feds don't grant the right of self governance to the states. Instead the states already have it and it cannot be removed.
Any expansion of federal authority over the states is going to run into a great deal of resistance no matter what the alleged benefits of that expansion.
As for the FAA having more power, yes, there was idle talk regarding your minimum trip radius during the second oil shock. Nothing came of it however because it was idle talk. Nothing came of it because that's how things work in the real world and an appreciation how things work in the real world is sorely lacking both in this thread and in many others at this site.
Too many posters here assume life is a video game. Someone posts a question like this one and the answers appear as if a game of
Civilization were being discussed. Huge changes, wrenching changes, all are made as if they only required a mouse click or two to impose. In thread dealing with military issues, this disconnect between fantasy and reality is even worse. Units are shuffled, attacks made, campaigns launched as if the world was nothing but a game of
Risk.
Simply stating that such fundamental changes as discussed here to the economic, political, and cultural structures of the US can be imposed by fiat and occur rapidly if only there is "enough" political will betrays a rather limited understanding of human nature.
May I suggest that you check out Rogue Beaver's many excellent time lines to see just how politics and humans actually work? He makes huge changes too, but he makes in a manner and on a time scale that are far more plausible than the
Civilization play hints being presented here.