647 #ClimateSolutions #Missed #JimmyCarter

"Jimmy Carter ‘He was prescient’: Jimmy Carter, the environment and the road not taken"
by David Smith for the Guardian [Jan 6, 2025]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/06/jimmy-carter-environment-climate-change

Quotes:
"The ex-president was a pioneer on renewable energy and land conservation but his 1980 defeat was a ‘fork in the road’"

"When a group of dignitaries and journalists made a rare foray to the roof of the White House, Jimmy Carter had something to show them: 32 solar water-heating panels.
“A generation from now,” the US president declared, “this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.”

"A few months after that solar panel unveiling in June 1979, Carter../\.. lost his bid for re-election in a landslide, in part because of a major energy crisis and soaring oil and gas prices. He was long seen as a one-term failure. But subsequent reappraisals have suggested that his environmental legacy, including pioneering efforts in land conservation and renewable energy, reveals a man ahead of his time."

"That year "[1977 JdeB] he also signed legislation creating the Department of Energy. But Carter would face opposition from the oil and gas industry and members of his own party. His renewable energy plan, seeking to establish tax credits for solar panel installations and calling for renewables to comprise 20% of the nation’s energy by 2000, failed to pass in Congress."

"However, Carter made more headway with environmental legislation, including initiating the first federal toxic waste cleanups and creating the first fuel economy standards. Perhaps most notably, Carter signed into law the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, providing protections for 157m acres (64m hectares) of land through the creation of national parks, refuges and conservation areas."

"Jim Pattiz [film-maker, environmentalist and co-director of the 2021 documentary Carterland], said: “I can say this with absolute confidence: Jimmy Carter protected more land than any other human in history that we know of. That’s something worthy of admiration and something I feel like people need to know about."

“We talk about Theodore Roosevelt in this country as being the great conservationist, and he certainly was, but Jimmy Carter surpassed him in many ways and stepped into the breach at a time when things could have gone either way.”

"In 1977, Carter received a memo from Frank Press, his chief scientific adviser, entitled Release of Fossil CO2 and the Possibility of a Catastrophic Climate Change. It warned that increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has a “greenhouse effect” that “will induce a global climatic warming”.
Carter commissioned the Global 2000 Report, which warned that large-scale burning of oil, coal and other fossil fuels could lead to “widespread and pervasive changes in global climatic, economic, social, and agricultural patterns”. Urging “immediate action”, the report recommended that industrialised nations agree on the safe maximum level of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere."

"Had Carter been re-elected, he might well have acted. But Reagan shunned the issue and the fossil fuel industry started spending tens of millions of dollars to sow doubt about climate science."

"She [Hill, of the Council on Foreign Relations JdeB] added: “Thinking about Carter made me sad because I realised that he tried to be above politics and set the nation on the right course. He couldn’t do it and we have continued to pay the price. It’s not just Americans paying the price, of course – it’s the rest of the globe because we didn’t take that fork in the road.”

"As Carter feared that June day in 1979, the White House solar panels did become museum pieces at venues such as the Smithsonian Institution and his presidential library. But in 2017 he watched nearly 4,000 solar panels go up in his home town of Plains, Georgia – enough to power more than half the town. At the dedication event Carter told the crowd: “This site will be as symbolically important as the 32 panels we put on the White House. People can come here and see what can be done.”

#TakeCareForLife #TakeCareForEarth
#StopBurningThings #StopEcoside
#ClimateBreakDown #StopRapingNature