While Norris compares our current oil problems to the energy crisis of the 1970s, he seems to have learned nothing from that period. That decade s energy policy was focused entirely on demand management. From odd-even gas rationing and regional allocation schemes to CAFE regulations, interference with consumer sovereignty did nothing to end the energy problems the country was facing. The solution was found not in demand management but in the elimination of price controls and the massive supply-side response that deregulation engendered. The real problem with demand management, though, is not its lack of theoretical or empirical justification but its moral implications.
Demand management is people management.
It is inherently paternalistic and must, by definition, thwart individual liberty and personal decision-making. For that reason alone, those policies should be rejected by any society that considers itself free.