I am getting that déjÀ vu feeling about the ‘70s. We have a failed president in serious free fall in the polls. We have ruinously high oil prices. We have inflation on the rise and higher and higher interest rates. Is stagflation far behind?

But wait. The big difference is we have a huge public and private debt that we didn’t have then.

Well, we all know about the ‘70s if we look back at all. Major recession. Likely impeachment of the president. A botched military action into Iran. A suspect election because of illegal operations. Hostages held without charges with no hope of judicial relief. A parallel universe?

OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) was exerting political pressure by withholding imports of oil as the situation tightened. The price of oil quadrupled to the current equivalent of about $70 a barrel and then dropped only to spike again toward the end of the decade. Conservation was the word of the decade.

Cars got smaller. “Economy cars” showed up as the Japanese manufacturers entered the market place, never to leave. And who can forget the “Drive 55,” the dreaded “double nickel” of the 55-mile-per- hour speed limit?

The U.S. was going to become independent of foreign oil by employing “conservation measures” of all kinds. Solar power was subsidized and so was increased insulation in all buildings. What happened?

The nightmare was over. We got an optimistic new president who traded weapons to our enemies in exchange for a drop in oil prices and he took the solar panels off the roof of the White House.

We got all the oil we wanted from all over the globe and especially from those OPEC folks. The drop in oil prices did more to stave off inflation than any of the president’s tax cuts, which actually kept the renewed growth relatively slow.

Oil supply was no longer a problem except that it created an increase in the balance of payments with our trading partners, but so what? They have been more than eager to let us borrow from them ever since.

While we seem to be revisiting the 1970s on the political and economic front, some things are very different. The problem this time is that the world’s oil is in short supply. The demand for oil is much greater than it was in the ‘70s and there is not enough to satisfy the current nations of the world.

The U.S. domestic production of oil peaked in 1970 at around 11 million barrels a day. The decline was steady and long as our reserves deteriorated and more people were driving more. But now we are down to a domestic production of less than 6 million barrels of oil a day and we import 14 million or more for a total of 20 million barrels a day, about 25 percent of the world’s daily oil supply.

There is no short-term help. It takes years to develop even a small oil field, which is all that is left. Will the public stand for oil drilling on the east and west continental shelves? It looks like conservation measures will be dictated by price this time around. Almost all of our energy-using machines are very inefficient. Is the economy in danger?

In order to control inflation, the Federal Reserve can raise interest rates to keep our currency attractive to investors. The problem is that the businesses that depend on low interest rates will decline. Business expansion and home building will drop and what about those pesky credit cards? The value of the dollar is already falling. Who will invest in assets that are declining in real terms?

The government could attack the debt so that it wouldn’t need to borrow as much but that would mean reversing the three rounds of tax cuts to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population.

While this would help the economy, it is unlikely under the current administration. The idea has been to keep the public content by borrowing money instead of having the folks pay for the huge military expenditures.

Are we in a box? Only if we remain blinded to potential alternatives.

Back to the ‘70s. It seems that conservation is our only option for both the near term and the long term.

While we may not be ready for a reduction in the speed limits, we must increase our emphasis on wind and solar energy. A crash program that reallocates resources now being used to support some of the over 120 military bases throughout the world would help build the necessary infrastructure.

It now looks like an energy fix is going to be driven by high prices, and the real question is whether the economy can stand the rapid increase in the price of oil that has resulted from our past neglect.