I really don't understand why Jimmy Carter got a bad rap. He's far more concerned with conservation than Conservatives are and was much more concerned with using Big Government for the good of everyone than Liberals are. Now he's an old man muttering for the last twenty years about how Palestine is getting the shaft.
I really think this is something that should be taught in Civics Classes. This and all the other times that Presidents have asked anything of the American people.
He was a (relatively) honest and peaceful Democrat who preceded Ronald Fucking Reagan. Carter/Mondale is such a tweed wearing recycling old fashioned progressive ticket, slowly seeking peace and and a de-escalation of the Cold War.
So Reagan came along and said "I promise I will lower taxes and kill commies" and started bombing shit and ordering nuclear battleships and orbital death beams and X-ray lasers and cutting education because "bootstraps" shit. He'd give long grandfatherly speeches about Jesus and the Bible and joke about starting WW3. Also he killed Arabs and made them give us cheap oil. So of course Republicans deified him.
It's the difference between the 70s and the 80s. Things got worse.
Carter wanted 20% of our electricity to come from solar by 2000?
"Solar power in the United States is the largest available energy source for the United States, although in 2006, it accounted for less than 0.1% of electricity generation." from Wikipedia.
If everything Carter started environment and energy wise didn't have its balls cut off by Reagan we'd be a nation with 25 years of renewable power plant, electric car and maglev train development under our belts, instead of basically starting from scratch in the last few years when it is probably too late
