The oil and gas industry “knows what prosperity looks like” and its participants need to get politically involved to save the U.S. economy, the founder and chief executive of Citizens for Affordable Energy told the 92nd annual Gas Processors Association conference in San Antonio.

John Hofmeister, a former Shell executive who founded the nonprofit public policy group in 2008, gave the convention’s keynote address, telling the 2,600 attendees that “while we have pockets of prosperity in energy, the rest of our economic system is facing failure.”

He said in his constant travels the nation’s only fresh and new development nowadays can be found in and around oil and gas-related plays, such as the Permian and Williston basins. While the U.S. overlooks the economic advantages available from the unconventional energy, it struggles and misplaces its objectives.

“Did the economy in the fourth quarter of 2012 shrink 0.1% or did it expand 0.1%? We argue over that?” Hofmeister asked. Similarly, he mentioned recent federal statistics that only 63% of the adult population was employed in March, matching a low point during the economic malaise of 1979.

“We’ve spent all this to go back to 1979, when inflation was 18%, unemployment was 12% and President Carter was repudiated?” he added. The U.S. can do better and embracing the economic promise of the shale plays can make the difference, he said. “Here we sit on more hydrocarbon reserves than we will ever want or ever need. First, what kind of an economy is this and, second, what are we waiting for?”

Meanwhile, the nation’s energy and power system is one of the oldest in the world and in terrible shape. Hofmeister said the typical coal-fired power plant is now 45 years old “and we have 35-year-old nuclear plants that were licensed for 40 years.”

Americans wonder if the nation can return to its glory days as an economic super power and, thanks to its growing abundance of oil and gas, the answer is “absolutely,” he said.

By embracing the promise of those reserves, the energy business could see a boom unlike anything in the past, Hofmeister added.

“Some of you think you are busy but you ain’t seen nothing yet” if the nation makes full use of these resources, he said. “We can look at our children, and their children, and smile” as the U.S. returns to 5% annual growth rates it enjoyed after World War II and into the 1950s.

But to make that happen, the U.S. needs to move away from the haphazard energy planning it has now, a legacy of President Nixon’s call for energy independence in 1973 at the onset of the first oil crisis. The world has changed since then but American policy hasn’t, Hofmeister said.

To make that happen, the federal government needs to move away from the overlapping energy regulation now in place and adopt a regulatory model similar to the Federal Reserve, created in 1913 to rid the nation of the economic chaos of the 19th century.

“The only free energy market left is the individual driver, who can turn right or turn left to buy gasoline,” Hofmeister added.

To make that regulatory change happen, those involved in the energy industry need to replace the lack of information and misinformation available to the general public. “They will listen, get the facts out—explain, describe,” he said.

Also, the industry needs to demand that elected representatives end their “perversity of partisanship” and focus on what needs to be done. He cited as an example that the daily talk in Washington, D.C., now is on the 2014 congressional election and the 2016 presidential race. “Politicians refuse to yield positions for the common good” and the public must demand a change in attitude.