What would the Western world be like today if the oil crisis of 1973 had not occurred?

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Justo Miranda

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Global warming would have happened ~26+ years earlier and the resource pressure would have caused WWIII and that would have prevented the end of the Cold War from happening. Civil technology would have stagnated in the 80's as civil research money would have been diverted to military R&D. Europe/North America would be a nuclear desert by now. The battleground would have moved toward africa, middle east, and asia.
 
Well, I think that's the point of this thread:

Discussion and speculation-Alternative History and Future Speculation: What If?

In my opinion, the events of half a century ago are part of history and should not be considered by the usual critics as political content.

The Second World War has already been losing interest for two decades and I believe that new fictional scenarios closer to the reality of this century are necessary.

The problem is that the villains of our time cannot be criticized because of the established paradigm: after Hitler everyone is good.

It would be terrible if the loss of fifty years of technological advances were the difference between stopping the asteroid or dying watching it approach.
 
Justo Miranda said:
The Second World War has already been losing interest for two decades and I believe that new fictional scenarios closer to the reality of this century are necessary.
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Well, while next generations grow, WWII is becoming simply too far in the past for them. General interest is lost and left for Historians and enthusiast only.

Ok. I agree, new scenarios are welcome.
 
Even without the oil crisis the golden postwar era economic boom was coming to an end, the US went off the dollar in 1971 and inflation was on the rise from the late 60s. The business slowdown of 1970 had already thinned the fields in the Can Am racing series. Without the oil crisis the 70s won't be as bad, but the bugs in the postwar system were now making that system unworkable.

I'm no expert on nuclear around the world, I just know a bit about Australia and the UK. It appears as if by the 70s the first great enthusiastic rush to nuclear had died down and countries were living with the reality of nuclear power. In 1971 Australia's nuclear power reactor projects was cancelled just as construction began in favour of coal. In the mid-late 60s the British 2nd generation nuclear power plants had dubious business cases resulting in an effective push-back from the coal industry, and the costs ballooned for these plants. In parallel things like the NPT, ABM Treaty, SALT I & II were occurring. The 3 mile Island occurred and all these factors took the steam out of nuclear power for decades.
 
Well, I'm curious to know what kind of country Cambodia would be if the Renault that almost ran over Pol Pot in Paris had sent him to hell... perhaps a wider American car would have done it.

What kind of country would Korea be if MacArthur had used nuclear weapons to stop the Chinese advance? Would the Russians have ceased their intervention?

What kind of country would Cuba be if Kennedy had not read the book "The Guns of August?. Would he be alive today if he had shown more firmness in the face of the provocations of the Russians?

What kind of country would Vietnam be if the B-52s had raided Hanoi?

What kind of country would Iran be if instead of Carter the president had been Reagan?

Would cheap oil have been the cause of more wars or fewer wars?

Was there a relationship between Soviet propaganda at the time of the Persing missiles and the beginning of anti-nuclear sentiment? Or was it the reactor accident on the Island of the Three Miles?

To me they are just fascinating historical episodes that should be developed and discussed impartially, but it is very disheartening to find that there are still people who consider them untouchable issues with high ideological voltage, even from a personal point of view. How many years or how many new paradigms will it take for the twentieth century to cease to be a current ideology?
 
What-ifs can be immense fun, but that's really all they are.

Pol Pot's alternate may have been worse -- he did not work alone. Reagan may have exasperated the situation (I'd have just let the shah die in Mexico, and that would have been any US president's best option).
 
None on the list matter or will change anything as none deal with the actual key cause that resulted in these "side events" being addressed.
 
1635yankee said:
What-ifs can be immense fun, but that's really all they are.

Pol Pot's alternate may have been worse -- he did not work alone. Reagan may have exasperated the situation (I'd have just let the shah die in Mexico, and that would have been any US president's best option).
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Do you mean that Pol does not have the record for genocides per number of inhabitants?... what could be worse?

Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia)​
1975​
1979​
1,386,734[123][124]​
3,000,000[125][126]​
The Cambodian genocide was the systematic persecution and killing of Cambodian citizens by the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot.[127] The Khmer Rouge emptied the cities and forced Cambodians to relocate to labour camps in the countryside, where mass executions, forced labour, physical abuse, malnutrition, and disease were rampant.[128][129] Up to 20,000 mass graves, the infamous Killing Fields, were uncovered, where at least 1,386,734 murdered victims found their final resting place.[130][131] The Khmer Rouge Tribunal found that targeting of Vietnamese and Cham minorities constituted a genocide under the UN Convention.[132][133]​
15–33% of total population of Cambodia killed,[134][135] including 99% of Cambodian Viets, 50% of Cambodian Chinese and Cham, 40% of Cambodian Lao and Thai, 25% of Urban Khmer, 16% of Rural Khmer​
 
Seragina said:
None on the list matter or will change anything as none deal with the actual key cause that resulted in these "side events" being addressed.
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The times of historical determinism are over, "the current key cause" is just the illusion of an adolescent brain abducted by propaganda since May 1968.
 

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