When Barack Obama looked into a television camera this week and said the United States urgently needed to break its addiction to oil, he was sitting at the same desk in the same office where Jimmy Carter said the same thing 31 years ago. For conservatives who think Jimmy Carter was a terrible president, the parallel was ominous.

"It's the second term of Jimmy Carter! Same speech!" bellowed the inexplicably popular radio host Rush Limbaugh. "Everything he said, Obama repeated last night!"

Limbaugh rambled on in mock astonishment, then got to what he thought was the crucial point. "There's nothing new about who these people are. This just happens to be the current iteration of them. Jimmy Carter was a bumbling fool. We don't have really a bumbling fool here. We have somebody who looks like one when he makes a speech last night but I'll guarantee you everything this guy has in his head, that he wants to see as the roadmap to the future, it's happening. We are on that road." And it's just a matter of time before farms are collectivized and schoolchildren sing The Internationale.

Notice what Limbaugh didn't talk about? Right. The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and the future of oil and energy, which was what the speech was actually about.

And that may be because, on the substance of this immensely important issue, Obama is right. So was Jimmy Carter -- at least where it counted most.

The foundation of Carter's oil speeches -- there were several -- unlike Obama's, was a forecast.

"The oil and gas we rely on for 75 per cent of our energy are running out," Carter said in 1977. "Unless profound changes are made to lower oil consumption, we now believe that in the early 1980s, the world will be demanding more oil than it can produce." If demand outstripped supply, prices would soar, and since production would never again catch up with demand, prices would never come back down. And that was the best-case scenario. It was even possible that if world oil consumption continued to grow "by five per cent a year, as it has in the past, we could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade."

That forecast -- supported by most experts -- was completely wrong. The price of oil crashed in 1985 and stayed low for two decades.

But Carter wanted the United States to act not only because oil was running out. It was also about reducing pollution. And boosting national security.

The U.S. did make considerable advances in conservation, diversification and development during Carter's last years in office. But the Reagan administration had no interest in Carter's energy program and when the price of oil crashed, progress stopped.

Flash forward to 2010: The United States, like most of the developed world, is in essentially the same position it was in the 1970s. Addicted. Dependent on oil from unstable regions. Sending a torrent of money to the government of Iran and other odious oil-producers.

A few things have changed, however. Fear of shortages isn't as widespread as it was in Carter's day, although peak oil must at least be considered a legitimate risk. Climate change is a major new threat. Iran is closer to possessing nuclear weapons, thanks to a research program funded by oil money. And oil production has pushed into ever-more difficult environments -- like drilling one mile beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico -- where the risk of catastrophic accident rises steadily.

All in all, the case for change is even stronger today. So Carter's forecast was wrong but his basic approach to energy -- kick the oil habit, now -- was absolutely right. If it had been followed, the U.S. would be stronger, and the world much better off, than it is today.

But Obama's critics don't talk about that. Instead, they mock the billions of dollars Carter spent on a synthetic fuel program that went nowhere -- without mentioning that the money Carter spent was minuscule compared to what it will cost to cleanse the Gulf of Mexico.

And that's the least of it. During the Carter administration, the U.S. created a military task force to operate in the Persian Gulf. It had to. Oil is the developed world's lifeblood and the Strait of Hormuz is its carotid artery. Those who had previously policed the region and protected the flow of oil -- the Shah's Iran and, before it, Britain -- were no longer in business. Under Ronald Reagan, the task force was upgraded to a command. Under George H.W. Bush, the United States fought its first war in the region. Under Bill Clinton, it stationed forces in Saudi Arabia -- inflaming Muslim zealots everywhere -- and became the region's permanent constabulary. Under George W. Bush, the United States invaded Iraq.

Combined, these actions cost trillions of dollars, not to mention hundreds of thousands of lives. Conservatives find this all quite acceptable. But money for conservation, diversification and alternative energy research? Absurd.

When Jimmy Carter was president he ordered solar panels to be erected on the White House as a symbolic gesture of where he wanted the United States to go. Ronald Reagan tore them down. Conservatives cheered.

On energy, Jimmy Carter was not "a bumbling fool." The fools are those who still can't see why things must change.

Dan Gardner's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

E-mail: dgardner@thecitizen. canwest.com.