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Instead of saving electricity and money by adding an extra hour of sunlight to evenings most of the year, it cost Indiana homes an extra $8.6 million in electricity bills – mostly from chugging air conditioners – each year. And since 95 per cent of that extra energy was generated by coal-fired power plants, that meant much more atmosphere-warming carbon dioxide was spewed into the air.

Expanded nationally, those results would translate to at least two coal-fired electricity plants pumping power just to feed the daylight savings habit.

"In Indiana, I can tell you unambiguously now, there are social and environmental costs associated with daylight savings time because of the pollution emissions and carbon dioxide emissions contributing to climate change," Kotchen says.

Another way daylight savings might be fuelling our warming climate? Increased carbon dioxide fumes sputtering out of car tailpipes, says Michael Downing, author of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time. Last March's early spring forward coincided with increased gas prices at the pumps.

But the hikes had no effect on gas sales, a result dubbed by many analysts as the "daylight savings effect," he says.

"When you give people more light after work, they do go to the mall or ball park and they don't walk there. They get in their cars," says Downing, adding that in the 1930s, the petroleum industry lobbied hard to reintroduce daylight savings.

The practice was first introduced, temporarily, in the United States during World War I, and then again during World War II. In 1966, it was reintroduced across most of the United States and Canada, beginning the last Sunday in April and ending six months later in late October. Since then, it has been expanded twice.

While energy conservation has always been the window dressing, the true motivation was repeatedly economic, says Downing, who spent two years reading all the U.S. congressional and senate hearings on DST dating back to 1919.

"The most persistent lobby on behalf of daylight savings has long been retailers and merchants. If you give people more light when they leave work, they will stop and shop on their way home," says Downing, a writing professor at Tufts University.

"There is a reason we continue to get daylight savings under the rubric of energy conservation because as a policy, it costs individual consumers nothing and asks them to conserve nothing. So it's wildly popular," he says.

"Unfortunately, it's entirely ineffective."

Sparked by the combination of reduced oil production and drastically increased prices, the oil crisis marked the end of a period of constant growth in Western
countries following the Second World War. Along with social and economic adjustments such as energy-saving measures and reduced activity came the understanding
that unlimited development based on unrestricted oil at low prices was no longer feasible. Taking its title from familiar signs at gas stations throughout
North America during those years, 1973: Sorry, Out of Gas investigates how architecture and urbanism responded to this new reality. In contrast to
the era’s sense of austerity it was a time of significant developments and intense experimentation in the field of architecture.

The research and innovations of thirty years ago are of particular relevance in the context of contemporary concerns about diminishing energy resources.
While influential at the time, much of the innovative work of architects, engineers, and activist groups of the period was forgotten once financial markets
and energy distribution systems adjusted, and political focus diminished. Today, however, a new sense of urgency is emerging, provoked by the reality of
a deteriorating environment and a finite supply of fossil fuels. “It is of vital importance to consider the radical yet, in many cases, little-known work
from the 1970s as architects today struggle to address similar issues,” said CCA Director and exhibition curator Mirko Zardini. “By providing insight on
the forerunners of many contemporary approaches to sustainable living, the exhibition aims to increase public awareness and encourage contemporary research
in the field.”

The accompanying catalogue, Sorry, Out of Gas, is a unique publishing project combining the diverse materials assembled for the exhibition with a
specifically commissioned children’s component by illustrator Harriet Russell. In her 32-page story entitled “An Endangered Species,” Ms. Russell
introduces the exhibition’s subject to a broader audience of young readers. With her distinctive drawings and hand-lettered text, Ms. Russell uses
humour to describe the role of oil in daily life and to suggest alternatives to this rapidly diminishing resource.

An essay by curator Mirko Zardini follows the introductory children’s component, while specific themes and projects are highlighted throughout the
book in short texts written by co-curator Giovanna Borasi along with Adam Bobbette, Daria Der Kaloustian, and Pierre-Edouard Latouche.

Many of the architectural projects in the exhibition are represented through the photographs of Jon Naar, who traveled extensively across North
America to document buildings and their architects and engineers in remote as well as urban contexts. His work disseminated their ideas through
publications of the time, and forms an essential contribution to the CCA catalogue and exhibition.

Co-published by the CCA and Corraini Edizioni, Mantua, and designed by Massimo Pitis with Bianca Baldacci, Sorry, Out of Gas reproduces over
200 colour and black-and-white images on 232 pages. The volume is available at the CCA Bookstore for $49.95 CAD.

1973: Sorry, Out of Gas is the first exhibition curated by Mirko Zardini in his role as CCA Director and Chief Curator, which he assumed in November
2005. As Visiting Curator, Mr. Zardini previously curated the CCA exhibitions Sense of the City (2005) and Out of the Box: Price, Rossi, Stirling +
Matta-Clark (2004). His research, writings, exhibitions, and architectural projects engage contemporary architecture, its transformations, and its
relationship with the city and landscape. A former editor of Casabella magazine and Lotus International, Mr. Zardini also served on the editorial board of
omus magazine. He has taught at prestigious architectural schools, including the Swiss Federal Polytechnic University in Zurich, Harvard University, and
Princeton University.

CCA Curator of Contemporary Architecture since 2005, Giovanna Borasi curated the exhibition Environment: Approaches for Tomorrow (2006) on the work
of Gilles Clément and Philippe Rahm. Before joining the CCA, she co-curated House Sweet Home, Different Ways to Live, Spazio Ventisette,
Milan (2000), and collaborated on several exhibitions including Asphalt, The Character of Cities at the Milan Triennale with Mirko Zardini (2003). Ms.
Borasi was an editor and writer for Lotus International and Navigator. She served as Assistant Editor for the book series Quaderni di Lotus; and was member of
the editorial staff of the graphic design magazine Lettera, a supplement to the architectural magazine Abitare.

As for the politics of possibility, Nordhaus and Shellenberger make a case for a massive governmental program in developing cheap, clean energy, as the Defense Department did with microchips or jetliners. It won't happen in the private sector alone, since they "rarely initiate technological revolutions," and there is actually very little innovation going on in the energy sector today. By contrast, when the Pentagon in the 1960s effectively guaranteed the market for microchips, it touched off a revolution that drove down the costs and spread the technology to many sectors of the economy. "An investment of roughly $200 billion would bring the price of solar energy down to that of coal," they estimate.

The authors adopt a politics of hope, rather than fear. "Cautionary tales and narratives of eco-apocalypse tend to provoke fatalism, conservatism, and survivalism among voters -- not the rational embrace of environmental policies," they contend. "Young and grassroots environmentalists are more inspired by the vision of creating a new energy economy than regulating the old one." Got that Al Gore?