MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We are taking a look back at the legacy of Jimmy Carter, who died late last month. As president, his priorities included energy efficiency and shifting away from foreign crude oil. The actions he took were criticized then but laid the groundwork for the country to address climate change now. For more on his environmental legacy, we're joined now by Jeff Brady from NPR's climate desk. Good morning, Jeff.
JEFF BRADY, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So President Carter came into office in the 1970s, and people may forget the U.S. imported a lot of oil then. Then embargoes and supply disruptions led to long lines at gas stations. Would you remind us of how Carter responded to that?
BRADY: Well, one big thing - he focused on energy conservation. And that seems like a given today, but it wasn't really on Americans' minds after the 1950s and '60s, when it seemed like the oil would always flow. But the Arab oil embargo came in 1973 over U.S. support for Israel, and energy experts started worrying that oil and natural gas might run out. So shortly after Carter took office in 1977, he delivered what has become known as the sweater speech. He sat by a fireplace, wore a cardigan sweater and addressed the country on television.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
JIMMY CARTER: All of us must learn to waste less energy. Simply by keeping our thermostats, for instance, at 65 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees at night, we could save half the current shortage of natural gas.
MARTIN: So 65 degrees at the daytime, 55 at night. How did Americans react to that?
BRADY: You know, some people made fun of him for this, and that's how unusual that idea of energy conservation was at the time. Another unusual thing Carter did - he famously put solar panels on the White House in 1979. Here's what he had to say about that at a press event.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CARTER: Today, in directly harnessing the power of the sun, we're taking the energy that God gave us, the most renewable energy that we will ever see, and using it to replace our dwindling supplies of fossil fuels.
MARTIN: What happened to those solar panels?
BRADY: You know, they were removed less than a decade later during Ronald Reagan's Republican administration. Reagan had beat Carter in a landslide election and came in with different policies. Since then, the country's conservation and alternative energy efforts have progressed, though, in fits and starts, depending on who's president. I talked with Amy Myers Jaffe, who directs the Energy, Climate Justice, and Sustainability Lab at New York University. She says Carter made the U.S. a leader on renewable energy like wind and solar, but she says that didn't last.
AMY MYERS JAFFE: Had the United States stayed the course and we had not had volatility in our federal efforts in alternative energy, we would maybe be still the premier country for alternative energy.
BRADY: Instead, she says the U.S. is playing catch-up with countries like Denmark and Spain on wind energy and China for solar and electric vehicles.
MARTIN: And, Jeff, I think most people do understand now that climate change is the big environmental issue the world is grappling with. What was President Carter's record on that?
BRADY: You know, he received a memo the summer after he took office in 1977 from an adviser in his administration who warned carbon dioxide from fossil fuels could lead to, quote, "catastrophic climate change." But the next day, Carter's energy secretary downplayed that, said more research was needed before the president would get involved. Carter seems to have paid attention to that, and his focus was more on securing energy supplies during his administration.
MARTIN: That is Jeff Brady from NPR's climate desk. Jeff, thank you.
BRADY: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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