Here is a scenario worse than gasoline and home heating oil selling at $5 or $6 per gallon later this year: instead, prices drop to and stabilize at about $3 per gallon. When it’s clear those prices will remain long-term, households and businesses adjust their budgets, car manufacturers nominally increase fuel efficiency, driving habits change only slightly and life goes on.

It has happened before.

In 1973, OPEC – the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries – decided to stop selling oil to the U.S. and other nations in retaliation for their support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War in October of that year. Oil prices quadrupled in just a few months, peaking at around $50 per barrel (measured in 2007 dollars).

In response to the crisis, which led to gas rationing, President Nixon created Project Independence in November 1973, which aimed to have the U.S. independent of Middle East oil by 1980. That end would be achieved by a national policy of conservation and working toward developing alternative fuels. National speed limits were lowered to 55 miles per hour, oil-fired electricity generation plants were converted to coal, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline was completed increasing domestic supply, and the federal government invested in mass transit.

Funny-looking cars such as the Honda Civic began showing up in neighborhood driveways, and Americans discovered their home’s thermostat could be set below 70 degrees without ice forming in their kitchen sinks.

OPEC finally relented, and supply increased, and the sticker shock of 1973 faded. A second crisis came in 1979 on the heels of the Iranian revolution, and the subsequent Iraq-Iran war. President Jimmy Carter called on Americans to again lower their thermostats, and he installed solar panels and a wood stove in the White House.

But in 1980, a six-year decline in oil prices began, and speed limits crept back up, cars got bigger and thermostats were back at 72 degrees. Solar panels and wind turbines were derided as hippie hardware, and elected officials scored points by complaining about subsidies to Amtrak.

The current oil crisis could very well mark the beginning of the end of the petroleum age. Or it could be something like a minor heart attack preceding the final, fatal one. The new president, Congress and Legislature must be ready to craft energy policies as if the last barrel of oil will be pumped by the end of the decade.

If prices do decline in the coming months, elected officials must recall the urgency they felt about our country’s lack of forward-looking energy policy when gas hit $4 per gallon.