In 1979 the price of gas at the American pump doubled to $39.50 a barrel – $172 in today’s money. The future of industrial civilisation seemed in doubt. But to Jimmy Carter, these oil woes were a distraction from the real issue: the moral failure of the American people. ‘Much deeper’ than the energy crisis, said the President, was a ‘crisis of confidence’ in politics and society, born out of a ‘worship of self-indulgence and consumption’.