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View Full Version : Carter Was Right!



Nbadan
04-21-2010, 12:09 AM
President Carter installed solar panels on top of the White House some 30 years ago...


http://conservationreport.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/jimmy-carter-solar-panels.jpg

Reagan had them dismantled and taken down.

Watch "Green Days" on PBS, it will make you sick.


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Two years later, as the bin Laden family's sole US representative was bailing out George Bush Junior's failing oil business, Jimmy Carter gave another speech on energy, further refining his national energy policy. He had already started the national strategic petroleum reserve, birthed the gasohol and solar power industries, and helped insulate millions of homes and offices. But he wanted to go a step further. "I am tonight setting a clear goal for the energy policy of the United States," Carter said on July 15, 1979. "Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 -- never. From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation. The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks right now and then reversed as we move through the 1980s..." In addition, we needed to immediately begin to develop a long-range strategy to move beyond fossil fuel.

Therefore, Carter said, "I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this nation's first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000." But then came the Iran/Contra October Surprise, when the Reagan/Bush campaign allegedly promised the oil-rich mullahs of Iran that they'd sell them missiles and other weapons if only they'd keep our hostages until after the 1980 Carter/Reagan presidential election campaign was over. The result was that Carter, who had been leading in the polls over Reagan/Bush, steadily dropped in popularity as the hostage crisis dragged out, and lost the election. The hostages were released the very minute that Reagan put his hand on the Bible to take his oath of office. The hostages freed, the Reagan/Bush administration quickly began illegally delivering missiles to Iran.

And Ronald Reagan's first official acts of office included removing Jimmy Carter's solar panels from the roof of the White House, and reversing most of Carter's conservation and alternative energy policies

Common Dreams (http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0503-22.htm)

Carter was the first president to actually have a national energy policy. He understood more about energy than any president before or since and he foresaw all the problems we are having with energy today and had a plan to prevent them. Had we fully implemented his policies, we would be much better off and energy independent today.

boutons_deux
04-21-2010, 01:09 AM
Repugs are genetically predisposed to hate and destroy anything that isn't Repug, no matter how correct, useful anything is, no matter much damage it does to the America's interest. Their rigid ideology of negation and destruction must be followed blindly.

DMX7
04-21-2010, 01:22 AM
Solar Panels would make us look weak. May as well fly an Al-Qaeda flag above the White House.

Wild Cobra
04-21-2010, 04:27 AM
The solar panels installed then were the same type installed at the Multnomah County Shops here in Portland. Inefficient water heat transfer. The ones here were removed because the maintenance cost was more than using electricity. The same I bet happened at the White House. Now President Bush did have solar panels reinstalled a few years back, but they were the more efficient photo-electric type.

boutons_deux
04-21-2010, 05:44 AM
Details, details, WC can always find the devilish details.

Installing the panels on the WH was symbolic, even radical at the time, and an act of vision and leadership pointing to where the country needed to go. Then the country fell into the greed-is-good (for the the wealthy) black-hole of St Ronnie/Movement Conservative destructionism.

sabar
04-21-2010, 06:13 AM
All people have is rhetoric. If politicians want something to change, then they need to tax cheap fossil fuels out of competition or subsidize expensive alternatives cheaper than fossil fuels.

Obviously, that is a silly strategy since no one else will follow your example and you'll be stuck paying a premium on fuel while everyone else still burns cheap coal for the next hundred years.

The government has a long term strategy, wait until fossil fuels cost too much from low supply and let everything sort itself out. Its the exact same strategy every nation on the planet is using. Every single time a resource is running out this is what happens. The forest goes down bare, the lake turns into putrid waste, the species goes extinct, or what have you.

Human nature I guess. It is naive to think that implementing those policies 30 years ago would have gotten us anywhere close to energy dependent. The amount of industries that use petroleum are staggering. You can't just stick a $30,000 solar panel to anything with an engine or power outlet.


Repugs are genetically predisposed to hate and destroy anything that isn't Repug, no matter how correct, useful anything is, no matter much damage it does to the America's interest. Their rigid ideology of negation and destruction must be followed blindly.

There is no biological advantage to obliterating everything that moves because of ideology, especially useful things. This genetic trait would of been weeded out pretty fast in a population. Your blind rage is kind of poetic, but makes no sense when you actually read it.


Details, details, WC can always find the devilish details.

Installing the panels on the WH was symbolic, even radical at the time, and an act of vision and leadership pointing to where the country needed to go. Then the country fell into the greed-is-good (for the the wealthy) black-hole of St Ronnie/Movement Conservative destructionism.

All species are greedy, there IS something that is genetically coded. All presidents take out things that they don't like from their predecessor, no matter how useful it may seem. Its been going on since Washington left office, so pointing one example and crying foul isn't much use. It is the ugly nature of politics.

Anyways, no one has an answer to energy policy. If we are going to replace all our fossil fuels with clean energy, then someone better figure out where the money to make it economical is going to come from. It's easy to say to do something. Doing it is another story. Does anyone even have a cost estimate? For example, coal is dirt cheap to set-up, maintain, and is cost efficient per megawatt. Nuclear is pretty much the opposite. How much money do we need? Where does it come from?

We aren't even close to having a plan.

Wild Cobra
04-22-2010, 10:34 AM
Details, details, WC can always find the devilish details.

Installing the panels on the WH was symbolic, even radical at the time, and an act of vision and leadership pointing to where the country needed to go. Then the country fell into the greed-is-good (for the the wealthy) black-hole of St Ronnie/Movement Conservative destructionism.
Yep, it was symbolism over substance. Just what good liberals love to see.

as for the "vision" of where we needed to go... Pointless to do it like they did. The best you could say it was... a Jobs Program, to employ people in a job that the market would otherwise not sustain.

Wild Cobra
04-22-2010, 10:47 AM
All people have is rhetoric. If politicians want something to change, then they need to tax cheap fossil fuels out of competition or subsidize expensive alternatives cheaper than fossil fuels.

Well, I'm for increasing the gas tax, but not subsidies.

If I recall, the federal gas tax is 18.4 cents a gallon. It has been 18.4 cents for... for... too many years. It should have been indexed to inflation, and I am for the plan to raise it a few cents a year until it's 40 cents, then index it to inflation.


Obviously, that is a silly strategy since no one else will follow your example and you'll be stuck paying a premium on fuel while everyone else still burns cheap coal for the next hundred years.

This is where it is pointless now to outsource our jobs to Asia. Now products are produced by power generation with little or no pollution controls.


The government has a long term strategy, wait until fossil fuels cost too much from low supply and let everything sort itself out. Its the exact same strategy every nation on the planet is using.
I'm not that cynical. It's just a third rail. Politicians don't want to do what's right, because they fear the repercussions of the next election.

Every single time a resource is running out this is what happens. The forest goes down bare, the lake turns into putrid waste, the species goes extinct, or what have you.

That's a stretch.


Human nature I guess. It is naive to think that implementing those policies 30 years ago would have gotten us anywhere close to energy dependent.
We didn't have the technology then. We still can't replace coal and oil for poer, unless we start building nuclear plants.

The amount of industries that use petroleum are staggering. You can't just stick a $30,000 solar panel to anything with an engine or power outlet.

Agreed. The are too inefficient to supply us with any degree of power.