We need to stop making more cars.

 
The year of the embargo.
The price per gallon went from 29-cents to 59-cents almost overnight.  The year was 1973 and we were living in Hawaii.  Our favorite place to fill up our 1963 Plymouth Valiant with regular gasoline was at the Penny automotive center just down the street and above Peral harbor.  Back then it was full service and to explained, full-service was a station attendant would come to the driver side window and ask if we needed a fill-up or just a dollar or twos worth.  The “station attendant” at Pennys were teen girls and boys in matching shorts and Hawaiian print tops.  Not your oil-stained khaki uniformed grease monkeys.  Just cute girls and boys.  One would switch on the gas pump and fill up your gas tank.  Others would start cleaning off your windshield.  If need others would check the oil and water level.  All defining what is meant as ‘full-service.’ 
But all of that went away when the oil embargo started sometime mid-1973.  Brought on by the OPEC nations of oil producers.  Middle eastern countries who hated us. 
As a result, the cute girls and boys went away.  So gas prices went sky high and one had to pump his or her own gas.  And, from that time on gas became scares and prices kept going up.  Then gas stations began to limit how many gallons one could buy.  With a gasoline shortage with a limit on how much one could buy, lines of cars back then became longer and longer because cars were always in need of gas and often in line gasing up.  Waiting in line went like this:  Get in line, move forward a car length, switch off the engine, restart the engine, move forward, stop the engine, restart, etc. etc.  Waiting in line wasted more gas than just driving in town.
All of this thanks to the big oil companies who imported cheaper oil from middle eastern countries.  Never mind the oil extracted domestically.  A bit more expensive but one would conserve and drive shorter distances.  None the less, why would one buy something from people who despised we Americans.  Cue the guys who flew jetliners into the World Trade Center.  And yet we still buy our oil from the middle east.  Explain this.