Idaho Transfer: Commentary on the Environment and the 1973 Oil Crisis (Philosophy and Film)
Idaho Transfer, directed by Peter Fonda and starring Kelley Bohanon, Kevin Hearst, Dale Hopkins, and Keith Carradine
While browsing public domain science fiction movies on the Classix app a few days ago, Hayley and I stumbled on a movie called “Idaho Transfer,” which naturally jumped out at us since we live in Idaho Falls, about an hour away from Craters of the Moon National Monument & Preserve where much of Idaho Transfer was filmed.
Many scenes of Idaho Transfer were filmed at Craters of the Moon National Monument & Preserve in Idaho.
I have always rather enjoyed 1970s speculative science fiction films that explore concepts in science, and the social and political issues of the day, all with a 1970s visual style and aesthetic sensibility that I find appealing. Many speculative science fiction films of the 1970s have a deliberately slow pace, adding to their cerebral tone, which I generally find appealing, in this case because of my own philosophical temperament. Idaho Transfer has both of these qualities in spades.
Idaho Transfer was released, and takes place, in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. Because of a looming “eco” disaster, a group of young people in their late teens / early 20s travel 56 years into the future (presumably from the year 1973 to the year 2029) to escape the coming disaster. (Apparently the time travel process causes kidney failure in any time traveler older than their mid-20s.) The young time travelers begin exploring Idaho of the future, attempting to make their way from Craters of the Moon, Idaho to Portland, Oregon.
Exploring Craters of the Moon, Idaho, circa 2029, in Idaho Transfer.
Conflict ensues between a couple of the female time travelers, causing one of them to flee even further into the future where the people of the future have invented a novel solution to the energy crisis: they use time travelers from the past as fuel for their automobiles of the future, prompting the main character to be used as fuel for the automobile of a road-tripping family of the future in the final scene. Idaho Transfer ends with a very interesting question about what will happen when they are no longer able to find any more time travelers to use as fuel—whether the people of the future will have to begin using each other as fuel, in an on-the-nose reference to the 1973 oil crisis.
The central question of Idaho Transfer: What happens when we run out of (human) fuel?
So why is this painfully 1970s low-budget science fiction film worthwhile philosophically? Idaho Transfer directly addresses an environmental issue that still haunts us today: what do we do when we run out of the fossil fuels on which our society has come to depend so completely? Although we have partial answers to that question today in the form of alternative energy sources, we are a long way from a fully sustainable energy source for all our society’s energy needs. In addition, Idaho Transfer is interesting historically because it illustrates growing public awareness in the early 1970s of the environmental and social/political issues surrounding the 1973 oil crisis with its inevitable consequences projected into the far future.
It seems to me that the final scene of Idaho Transfer, with the question of whether people of the future will have to resort to using each other for fuel, should be interpreted as an example of the State of Nature, life outside of civilized society, which 17th-century English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes described in his political treatise Leviathan as being a war of everyone against everyone. The future society depicted in Idaho Transfer could also be seen as an example of economic scarcity, with the dystopian view that scarcity of natural resources could cause mankind to slip back into the State of Nature described by Hobbes, where no one is secure because everyone is in a constant fear for his or her life and resources. After all, if humans of the future resort to using each other for fuel, how could anyone possibly not be afraid for his or her life when, at every turn, you are in danger of being kidnapped and shoved into a fuel tank?—a rather grim interpretation of what we now call “biofuel.”
Idaho Transfer: Using People for Fuel
It seems that Idaho Transfer shares in Thomas Hobbes’s general view of human nature, that, left to our own devices, without the rules of civilized society and without an abundance of resources (fuel in this case), human society will deteriorate and regress back into its natural state, which Hobbes describes as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” What’s interesting to me is the way in which Idaho Transfer depicts this Hobbesian State of Nature but still within the context of future society, not completely outside society in a pre-societal state. Civilized humans of the future are the ones resorting to this brutish behavior of using each other for fuel, not their victims who are essentially 1970s peace-loving hippies as depicted in the film (with the exception of some brutish behavior between a couple of the time travelers toward the end of the film).
Violence in Idaho Transfer: Would people turn violent and return to the State of Nature, a war of everyone against everyone, as Thomas Hobbes described it, in times of economic scarcity, or when our natural resources run out?
One might have expected the time travelers themselves to completely revert to the State of Nature as Hobbes described, but the truly brutish behavior in the film comes from the “civilized” (in irony quotes) humans of the future who are truly barbaric, dressed nicely and driving their futuristic human-biofuel car while callously tossing another person into their car for use as fuel, not the stray group of time travelers living peaceably among themselves in the future Idaho wilderness. The takeaway seems to be that we shouldn’t expect brutish behavior to exist only outside civilized society as Hobbes seems to suggest, but within civilized society itself whenever our lives or our resources are in jeopardy, especially in light of the looming environmental and economic crisis described in the film, an allegory for the environmental and economic concerns of the 1970s that are still with us today as we continue to depend on fossil fuels while the quest goes on for alternative energy sources (much to the chagrin of the oil industry).
In Idaho Transfer, cars of the future are powered by human biofuel using time travelers from the past as fuel.
Idaho Transfer suffers from issues with pacing inherent to 1970s speculative science fiction films and from a lack of plot coherence. The film’s real weakness, however, isn’t in its message but in the fact that the film waits until the final punchline to make its message clear, thus leaving the viewer wondering what the point of the film is until the film’s final seconds and leaving little time for the message to sink in before the end credits begin rolling. Viewers may or may not appreciate the uniquely 1970s aspects of Idaho Transfer, such as the slow pace of the film or its very 1970s depictions of sexuality among the nubile young time travelers, as seen in the following screenshots from the film:
Idaho Transfer is very much a product of its time, an aspect of the film that viewers will either love and find charming or hate and find repulsive from the standpoint of modern film sensibilities and 21st-century cultural norms. Despite the weaknesses of Idaho Transfer as a film, however, the philosophical, social, and environmental relevance of the film far outweighs its weaknesses, and I found the film thoroughly enjoyable despite its faults and its datedness.
Purchase Idaho Transfer on Amazon:
For Further Reading on Thomas Hobbes and the State of Nature:
About Craters of the Moon National Monument & Preserve in Idaho:
