President Jimmy Carter
Last Saturday, The Carter Center released a statement indicating that, after a series of illnesses (including cancer) and hospital stays, 98 year-old former President Jimmy Carter has “decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention.” The announcement has initiated a lot of reflection and remembrances about Carter’s long list of achievements, from saving a Canadian nuclear reactor from meltdown as a young Navy Lieutenant, to getting Israel and Egypt to sign a historic peace agreement as President, to building houses for Habitat For Humanity well into his nineties as a former President.
However, one achievement by President Carter that may get overlooked was his forward-thinking, early dedication to renewable energy. Perhaps most dramatically, Carter had solar panels installed on the White House roof in 1979, well before almost anyone else used such technology. The Carter administration set a goal of delivering 20 percent of U.S. energy from renewable sources by the turn of the century. What happened? In 1986, Ronald Reagan had the White House solar panels taken down and not replaced. And Republicans (along with a few Democrats) have been doing everything they can to stifle renewable energy in favor of fossil fuels ever since. More than 40 years after President Carter set his goals, U.S. renewable energy consumption is only about 12.5 percent of the total (though thankfully it is slowly increasing.)
That is why the Biden administration should attach Jimmy Carter’s name to its renewable energy efforts. Such efforts can be renamed the “Jimmy Carter Renewable Energy Program,” and each facility built (such as solar and wind farms) can bear Carter’s name. What we’re talking about in particular are the renewable energy provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA), the signature legislation last year from President Biden and the Democrats. The IRA includes tax credits for home rooftop solar installation and electric vehicles, deployment of 120,000 new wind turbines, more battery plants, clean energy projects at rural electric cooperatives, and other significant steps.
There is no doubt that Republicans, who already oppose the Biden administration’s increase in renewable energy development under the Inflation Reduction Act, would strongly object to attaching Jimmy Carter’s name to any of it. That alone is good reason to do so.
Photo by Grace, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/Rn8uHI
