THE NATION HAS NEEDED drastic action to reduce energy consumption since 1973 when OPEC delivered its first shock to oil prices. Seven years later, we still need drastic action. Gasoline rationing should be prominent in any energy policy because it guarantees conservation, and does it more equitably than any other proposal.

Gasoline prices have more than doubled since 1973 and Americans have yet to cut down on their driving. One poll of business executives showed that if gasoline reached $2 a gallon, they still would not curtail their driving. Economists predict that even if gasoline prices increase 300 per cent between 1980 and 2000, per capita auto ownership will go up 43 per cent and automobile miles travelled will increase 35 per cent.

Attempts to force conservation by imposing gasoline taxes are therefore unlikely to result in significant savings. Americans have proved notoriously unwilling to cut down the number of trips they make each day or to drive slowly for conservation. Public transit ridership has actually decreased from 56 rides per capita in 1955 to 25 rides since 1970. The only certain result of increasing gasoline prices is further inflation.

Gas rationing has worked before, and it can work again. From 1942-1944, rationing resulted in a 50-per-cent drop in consumption of gasoline and fuel oil.

Besides guaranteeing that America would use no more than the planned amount of gasoline, rationing would allow everybody to buy a minimum amount of gasoline at a reasonable, controlled price. Permitting a "white market" for sale of unwanted rationing coupons would end some of the abuses arising during World War II and smooth over mistakes in original allocations.

A tax to encourage conservation serves as yet another burden to the poor and probably will not change the behavior of the rich, whose driving habits are the most in need of reform. Counterbalancing decrease in other taxes is an indirect way to compensate the poor and may not benefit the same people who suffer because of the gas tax.

A gas rationing program would stem inflation both directly, by controlling oil price increases, and indirectly, by reducing the nation's dependence on expensive foreign oil. Instead of leaving conservation to the vagaries of the so-called free market, rationing could immediately reduce oil imports, opening up alternatives in foreign policy to a blind commitment to keep the ever-more-expensive Mideast oil spigot open.