Earth Matters: Jimmy Carter's far-sighted environmental vision; Top 10 2024 climate disasters caused $229 billion in damages

Kai Bird is a distinguished journalist and author of a slew of books, including his Pulitzer Prize-winning American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer and, in 2021, what I think is the best of the three Carter biographies on my shelves, titled The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter. Nearly two years ago, he wrote an essay on Carter’s environmental vision and achievements at Yale 360e—Unheralded Environmentalist: Jimmy Carter’s Green Legacy. No excerpt can do it justice, but here’s one anyway:

Just before leaving office, Carter released a prophetic report, largely written by Speth, that predicted “widespread and pervasive changes in global climatic, economic, social and agricultural patterns” if humanity continued to rely on fossil fuels. The Global 2000 Report to the President became an early clarion call for scientists studying climate change.

History will judge Carter as a president ahead of his time. He set a goal of producing 20 percent of the nation’s energy from renewable sources by 2000. In an age of soaring energy prices and stagflation, he famously wore a cardigan on national television during a fireside chat in which he urged Americans to lower their thermostats and conserve energy. He put solar water heating panels on the roof of the White House, telling reporters, “A generation from now 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.” Ironically, while Carter put federal money into solar energy research, a few years later his successor Ronald Reagan ripped the solar panels off the White House roof — and a few are still displayed in museums.

Carter spent much of his time in office trying to deal with energy issues. He proposed a 283-page National Energy Act (NEA) that included a tax on oversized, gas-guzzling cars, tax credits for home insulation, and investments in solar and wind technologies. Carter insisted that his energy bill was the “moral equivalent of war.” In response, The Wall Street Journal labeled it with the sarcastic acronym MEOW. Republican Party chairman Bill Brock charged that the president was “driving people out of their family cars.” Michigan Democratic Congressman John Dingell told Carter aides that it was an “asinine bill.” The legislation nevertheless passed the House, but then encountered much more opposition in the Senate. Carter complained in a private White House diary, “The influence of the oil and gas industry is unbelievable, and it’s impossible to arouse the public to protect themselves.”

Some things clearly haven’t changed.

The energy bill that passed in 1978 was a complicated piece of legislation, with tax incentives for wind and solar, requirements for more efficient appliances, and big sums for research into these and other renewable sources. But there was also support for using more fossil fuels. Natural gas price controls were deregulated. This spurred more drilling and eventually led to a vast expansion of hydraulic fracturing, the “fracking” that has made the United States the largest producer and exporter of natural gas in the world.

In addition, the Synthetic Fuel Corporation was allocated $88 billion over 12 years to spur development of gasification and liquefaction of coal. Some $20 billion of this was designated to turn the kerogen oil shale deposits of Colorado and Utah into petroleum. Exxon predicted in a 1980 “white paper” that it would be producing 8 million barrels of oil a day from this source by the year 2000. Instead, plummeting oil prices, the Reagan administration’s demolishing of incentives, and technological issues meant that not a commercial drop of the stuff ever made it to market. Given the disastrous impact on land, water, and wildlife that would have occurred in the region, that counts as a very good thing.

Overall, however, Carter brought to the White House an unprecedented environmental stance that was “visionary,” as Jonathan Alter, the author of the biography His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life, writes in a new essay:

Energy and the environment are instructive examples, and not just because he forged the nation’s first green energy policy, doubled the size of the national park system, pushed through the first real fuel economy standards and approved the first toxic waste cleanup.

His placement of solar panels on the roof of the White House (later removed by Reagan) was symbolic but backed up by major bills that promoted solar for the first time. And he was ambitious for more. At the Carter Library in Atlanta, I found articles about global warming in scientific journals of the early 1970s that he had underlined.

By the end of his presidency, he became the first leader anywhere in the world to advocate slowing carbon emissions. The levels of necessary reduced emissions identified by the Carter White House in 1980 were identical to those ratified 35 years later by the Paris Climate Accords—which lends a tragic dimension to that year’s election.

No telling what might have happened if Carter had won a second term. What we do know is that the budget for research and development into renewables didn’t reach the (inflation-adjusted) level of Carter’s final budget until Barack Obama’s presidency three decades later.

—Meteor Blades

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RESOURCES & ACTION

GREEN BRIEFS

Some Graphics to Help Explain What Climate Change Looked Like in 2024

In a year-ender piece from Inside Climate News, Paul Horn looks back at environment news and developments with 15 of the 350 graphics he created or edited in 2024. Here's one sample:

Horn notes: “It’s easier to decarbonize electricity than some other sources of climate-changing pollution, like airplanes and farming. But while U.S. utilities have increased their use of renewables, they’ve often preferred to switch from coal to gas.”

Since 2011, the electricity-generating capacity of U.S. coal plants has been falling rapidly as one after another has shuttered its operations. Although there are still 215 coal-fired power plants of 50 megawatts or more operating in the United States, 40% of them are expected to shut down by 2030. As has previously been the case, most of these will be replaced with natural gas plants.

The advantage of burning gas instead of coal is that this releases about half as many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Trouble is, methane leaks during extraction, transportation, and processing boosts total emissions significantly from natural gas before burning. And when natural gas is liquefied for export, that adds even more to the greenhouse gas load. One scientist, Cornell professor Robert Howarth, calculated that when all factors are included, the export of liquefied natural gas (LNG) is worse for the climate than coal, a view that has drawn both support and criticism.

For three decades, Department of Energy Secretaries, presidents, academics, and oil and gas industry lobbyists have touted natural gas as a “bridge fuel” in the green transition. But this phased approach of coal to gas to renewables has a serious flaw. With production already at record-breaking levels, the industry is building a natural gas infrastructure with a life span of a half-century or more. That’s a bridge to nowhere climatically speaking.

As she wraps up her time at the DOE, Jennifer Granholm has indicated she’s not keen on expanding that infrastructure, particularly the multitude of new natural gas port terminals companies seek. Three weeks ago, the DOE released its fairly negative report on LNG exports. I wrote about that in Energy Secretary warns against OKing more LNG exports, but chooses not to deny any new permits. Excerpt:

Natural gas, the very name itself a marketing tool, has for decades been touted as a bridge fuel in the transition from coal to 100% clean energy sources. But the report concludes that increasing natural gas exports would mean an extra 1.5 gigatons of greenhouse gases emitted by 2050, equal to about a fourth of the current annual total of U.S. emissions. It would raise domestic gas prices by 31%. Adding to export facilities would further extend the environmental and health burden afflicting front-line communities, which are often poor or communities of color. Moreover, according to The New York Times, Granholm notedthat the study found increased LNG exports would displace more wind, solar, and other renewable energy than coal. The study modeled five scenarios, and in every one, global greenhouse gases were projected to rise, even when researchers assumed aggressive use of technologies to capture and store carbon emissions.

—Meteor Blades

Most Costly 2024 CLimate disasters killed 2,000 people and caused $229 BILLION in damages

Since 2018, the charity Christian Aid has tallied the costs of major climate disasters judging from insurance payouts. Its latest report was released December 29, and it’s a doozy. Just the 10 worst such disasters racked up a phenomenal $229 billion in damages in 2024. The true total is undoubtedly worse because so many of the affected people are uninsured, especially in poor countries. Richer countries tend to see more economic damage, but the death toll is higher in the poorer ones. Jonathan Watts at The Guardian report ed:

The NGO noted that other major climate disasters in 2024 had a lower immediate financial impact, but would have an incalculable knock-on cost in terms of deaths, destruction of globally important ecosystems and long-term damage to food supplies, social stability or sea levels. This included floods in west Africa, landslides in the Philippines, droughts in southern Africa and heatwaves in Bangladesh, Gaza and east Antarctica.

Christian Aid’s CEO, Patrick Watt, urged global policymakers to cut emissions and increase compensation payments to poor countries. “The human suffering caused by the climate crisis reflects political choices. There is nothing natural about the growing severity and frequency of droughts, floods and storms,” he said.

You don’t have to be a psychic to understand that worse is coming.

—Meteor Blades

Q&A with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on What Comes After Biden’s Climate Agenda

Robinson Meyer, founding executive editor of Heatmap and co-host of the site’s Shift Key, sat down in mid-December for a kind of exit interview with Granholm. Here’s an excerpt:

Meyer: Let’s talk about outcomes first, and then let’s talk about the department.

Granholm: Great, great. So just at a level, I hope — I know your listeners are savvy in this space, but just to put it in perspective: It is astonishing what the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law have been able to do to build out clean energy in the United States. It is mind-blowing. If you had told me — I’m a former governor of Michigan, and when I was governor, we saw all these jobs leave, all this manufacturing gone. It was just — and the federal government just sat on its hands and did nothing, although when the Obama-Biden administration came in, they saved the auto industry. But every supply chain, every — and they were all going to Mexico, or China, or whatever.

And so the hollowing out of much of the middle class and the manufacturing, and I think this is one of the things that Trump really picked up on. But across the nation, in industrial communities, small towns that had a factory that left … So the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law have caused now, as of today — and this is so far, since the Inflation Reduction Act was only passed a couple years ago — over 950 factories to come to America or expand in America, building these products for this clean energy transition. That is just mind-blowing to me. And those announcements are announcements. Then there’s the groundbreakings, and then there’s the ribbon cuttings. And so there’s been some groundbreakings and some ribbon cuttings, but all of those are going to bear fruit over the next few years.

Meyer: So during the Trump administration.

Granholm: Exactly. And that’s, I mean, regardless of who’s in the White House, this is really great for America, that we have, now, industrial strategy that has reversed that track, that tide. So that’s, in terms of outcomes, that is a huge outcome.

RESEARCH & STUDIES

Hesitancy towards parenthood. The study reveals that environmental values and worries are closely tied to a reluctance to have children, while general attitudes towards parenthood and demographic factors such as gender and age have minimal or no impact. Moreover, people hesitant to have children are often more proactive in reducing their carbon footprint and view their choice to remain child-free as part of a broader commitment to climate action. (Nature Climate Change)
Arctic Tundra Goes From Carbon Sink to Carbon Source for the First Time in Millennia. (Arctic Report Card—NOAA)
Study shows $1 billion in lost tax revenue in Houston area from industry tax breaks. (Texas Campaign for the Environment)
Fossil fuel interests “heavily entrenched’” in anti-wind efforts. The researchers mapped a network of ties between anti-offshore-wind organizations on the East Coast and think tanks such as the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the Heartland Institute. (Energy Research & Social Science)

HALF A DOZEN OTHER THINGS TO READ (OR LISTEN TO)

Humpack whale in the Salish Sea — Humpback whale breaches in the Salish Sea.

Whales can live way longer than scientists had thought, with potential lifespans as much as double previous estimates by Greg Breed and Peter Corkeron at The Conversation. Twenty-five years ago, scientists working with Indigenous whale hunters in the Arctic showed that bowhead whales could live up to and even over 200 years. Their evidence included finding stone harpoon points that hadn’t been used since the mid-1800s embedded in the blubber of whales recently killed by traditional whalers. Analysis of proteins from the eyes of hunted whales provided further evidence of their long lifespan. Like right whales, before that analysis, researchers thought bowhead whales lived to about 80 years, and that humans were the mammals that lived the longest. In the years following that report, scientists tried to figure out what was unique about bowhead whales that allowed them to live so long. But our new analysis of the longevity of two close relatives of bowheads shows that other whale species also have potentially extremely long lives. Understanding how long wild animals live has major implications for how to best protect them. See also: The Oil Industry Is Helping to Spread Misinfo About Whale Deaths

Milwaukee plans to build net-zero modular homes for lower-income residents — but it’s not easy by Kari Lydersen at Energy News Network. Living in a net-zero home is often a luxury for those who can afford solar panels, state-of-the-art HVAC and other innovations, and renovations. But lower-income people are those who could benefit most from energy cost savings, and those who suffer most from extreme climate. Milwaukee is trying to address this disconnect by building net-zero homes for low-income buyers in partnership with Habitat for Humanity, a marquee project of the city’s 2023 Climate and Equity Plan. The U.S. Department of Energy announced a $3.4 million grant that will go toward Milwaukee’s construction of 35 homes on vacant lots in disadvantaged neighborhoods and the opening of a factory to make wall panels for net-zero manufactured homes. City leaders have found the undertaking more challenging than expected, especially on the factory front. But they hope overcoming roadblocks will help create a new local and regional market for energy-efficient, affordable prefabricated homes, while also training a new generation of architects in the sector through partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning.

Hungry Mother State Park in Virginia offers nature programs to school groups.

Enrollment in Nature Schools Soars as Families Rediscover the Benefits of Outdoor Learning by Damon Orion at Local Peace Economy Project via the Wiki Observatory. Author, journalist, and child advocacy expert Richard Louv famously coined the term “nature deficit disorder” to describe the detrimental effects of children’s disconnection from nature. His assertions are backed by data that strongly suggests a link between increased exposure to nature and improved cognitive function, brain activity, and mental and physical health. Paraphrasing Louv, nature schoolteacher Angela Garcia notes, “America is completely deficient in Vitamin N: Vitamin Nature.” Garcia is the co-director of True Roots Nature School Program, a Santa Cruz, California-based outdoor education curriculum for children ages 18 months to 12 years old. Designed to provide all the benefits of indoor education while enriching the experience with nature immersion, this program “takes place on private property in the Santa Cruz Mountains in addition to field trip locations,” the school’s website states. In the U.S., schools focusing on reconnecting children with nature have seen a marked increase in enrollment since 2020. Meanwhile, a 2022 national survey from the Natural Start Alliance found “an estimated 800 nature preschools in the United States, up more than 200 percent from 2017.”

2024 was a fantastic year for energy storage by Julian Spector at Canary Media. Batteries reshaped the power grid in California and Texas, showing the rest of the country what’s possible when the tech is allowed to flourish. California paved the way with a decade of state-ordained incentives and mandates that pushed utilities into signing contracts for battery capacity. Texas didn’t do that, nor does it allow climate policy to dictate how it runs its energy system. Instead, the state lets private investors build whatever kind of power plant they think will make money in the competitive ERCOT market. ERCOT had to issue 11 conservation calls in 2023, when summer heat pushed demand high enough to overtake supply. This year, with 4 gigawatts of new batteries online, ERCOT issued no conservation calls all summer. California installed a whole lot of battery capacity, too, and became the first state to pass 10 gigawatts, back in April. Battery power now adds up to about one-fifth of peak demand on the grid. During a heat wave in the summer of 2020, California ran short on power and had to initiate rolling blackouts to avoid greater damage. Now, when record heat hits and millions of Californians crank their air-conditioning, the state can call upon a new army of batteries to shift its ample solar production into the hours when the sun goes down and supplies run low. “This is the first year since grid batteries have been around that summer didn’t happen in Texas and California,” quipped Jason Burwen, VP of policy and strategy at developer GridStor. See also: U.S. Residential Energy Storage Installations Reach a Record High

US Gas Car Sales Down 1% While Electric Car Sales Up 8% by Zachary Shahan at Cleantechnica/ Fossil fuel cars on their own are down more than auto sales overall — down 1% versus 0% in Quarter 3, 2024 compared to Q3 2023, and down 15% versus just 8% compared to Q3 2019. On a volume basis, fossil fuel vehicles lost a whopping 647,000+ quarterly sales in Q3 2024 compared to quarterly sales in Q3 2019. That’s a dramatic loss in quarterly sales. There’s no clear rebound either, as 2024 sales are even down 34,007 compared to Q3 3023. Note that Plug-in Hybrids with their gas engines are not counted as EVs in Shahan’s calculations. See also: New research indicates EV batteries may last about 40% longer than common expectations.

Purple spray paint marks where geothermal pipes are buried below streets and sidewalks in Framingham, Massachusetts, home to the first networked geothermal heating and cooling system built by a gas utility.

How an Unlikely Coalition of Climate Activists and a Gas Utility Are Weaning a Boston Suburb Off Fossil Fuels by Phil McKenna at Inside Climate News. Underground pipes and wells tap geothermal energy to heat and cool a neighborhood. Next stop, the world. … Three climate activists and three gas utility executives walk into a room. It may sound like the start of a joke. However, the meeting at an Eversource Energy boardroom outside Boston in December 2016 marked the beginning of an improbable relationship that is redefining what it means to be a gas utility. Though still in its infancy, the work is beginning to transform how communities across the commonwealth, the country and the world can heat and cool their homes without fossil fuels. In June, Eversource completed a geothermal system in Framingham, Massachusetts, that provides heating and cooling for an entire neighborhood, including public housing residents, by tapping low-temperature thermal heat from underground wells. It was the first geothermal system ever built by a gas utility. More than that, it’s a demonstration project that could chart a new course for the industry by transitioning off gas while preserving jobs.

WEEKLY BLUESKY POST

RESEARCH & STUDIES

Hesitancy towards parenthood. The study reveals that environmental values and worries are closely tied to a reluctance to have children, while general attitudes towards parenthood and demographic factors such as gender and age have minimal or no impact. Moreover, people hesitant to have children are often more proactive in reducing their carbon footprint and view their choice to remain child-free as part of a broader commitment to climate action. (Nature Climate Change)
Arctic Tundra Goes From Carbon Sink to Carbon Source for the First Time in Millennia. (Arctic Report Card—NOAA)
Study shows $1 billion in lost tax revenue in Houston area from industry tax breaks. (Texas Campaign for the Environment)
Fossil fuel interests “heavily entrenched’” in anti-wind efforts. The researchers mapped a network of ties between anti-offshore-wind organizations on the East Coast and think tanks such as the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the Heartland Institute. (Energy Research & Social Science)

ECOPINION

Highlighting the hypocrisy: fossil fuel export emissions By Sofia Gonzales-Zuniga, Danial Riaz and Mia Moisio at Climate Action Tracker. The top 10 fossil fuel exporting countries represent around 60% of the total exported fossil fuel emissions. Russia has the largest absolute contribution to exported emissions, with significant levels of oil and gas exports, as well as coal. Australia and Indonesia stand out because of their large coal exports; the United States produces the largest share of emissions from gas exports, and Saudi Arabia from oil exports.The top six countries (Russia, Australia, U.S., Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Canada) represent 50% of total exported emissions. These countries have a key role to play in enabling a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. While the buyers of these fuels need to reduce demand, the fossil fuel export business model is not in line with the goal of “transitioning away” from fossil fuels.

The World’s Biggest Dam Is the Last Thing China Needs by David Pickering at Bloomberg. If you’re worried about China’s insatiable appetite for coal and its role in the relentless heating of our planet, you might see the building of the world’s biggest renewable power plant high on the Tibetan plateau as unalloyed good news. Don’t get your hopes up. The proposed dam approved December 25 on the Yarlung Tsangpo river — which flows parallel to the Ganges before turning south through a 6-kilometer-deep (3.7-mile) canyon and joining its path through India and Bangladesh — is a list of superlatives. It could generate as much as 70 gigawatts of clean energy, sufficient to power the UK or Taiwan and three times what’s produced by the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze, currently the biggest power plant on the planet. It would be about eight times bigger than Jebel Ali, the largest non-hydro generator and the provider of more or less all of Dubai’s grid power. Once upon a time, a 300 terawatt-hour power plant would have seemed like a big deal in China, but these days it’s simply too small to move the needle. It’s not much more than what will be generated by the wind turbines and solar panels the country now installs in a single year, and such a colossal project will take decades to build.

And while China is building that new dam, it will continue building a 400-kilometer-long (250 miles) solar farm 5 kilometers (3 miles) wide in the Kubuqi Desert of Inner Mongolia. When completed, it will have a maximum generating capacity of 100 gigawatts — enough to power the entire city of Beijing, which currently is home to nearly 22 million people. So far, 5.42 gigawatts of the giant project have been installed.

Our imperiled public lands by Jonathan Thompson at High Country News. If Trump’s hunger for “energy dominance” and corporate freedom don’t come for your public lands, the “Cult of Efficiency” probably will. Musk donated $277 million to Trump’s campaign. In return, he has been chosen to co-chair the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, where he has vowed to slash some $2 trillion in allegedly “wasteful” spending. What this will actually mean remains unclear. But Trump’s suggestion that he may try to privatize the U.S. Postal Service because it’s not “profitable” and must be “subsidized” gives a good indication of what Musk’s quasi-department will be targeting. The USPS is designed to provide a public good, not a profit, and its priorities are fulfilling that mission, not maximizing efficiency. After all, how could delivering a letter to some remote rural backwater for some 50 cents ever be efficient? And if the USPS is a problem, then what about public lands and the agencies that manage them? Sure, they provide ecological benefits, stewardship of and free access to millions of acres of stunning landscapes, wildlife habitat and so much more. And yet, they are “subsidized” to the tune of tens of billions of dollars each year, making them ripe for Musk’s chopping block. See also: How Utah’s Latest Lawsuit Could Shape Public Lands.

1.5 degrees, climate protest — As a scientific goal, keeping the global temperature rise below 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) makes sense. But it doesn’t work well as a message when used to try to educate people about the climate crisis, according to critics.

Why 1.5 degrees has failed as a climate messaging strategy by Kristin Toussaint at Fast Company. To John Marshall of the nonprofit marketing firm Potential Energy Coalition, insistence on talking about 1.5 degrees of warming is a clear communications problem that holds back the climate movement. To get people to understand the threat of climate change and actually take action, he says we need to think more about how to motivate individuals. He advocates for goals around pollution, as opposed to temperature, which can be more relatable. A “net zero” goal, though, comes with many of the same issues as talking about 1.5° Celsius [2.7‚ Fahrenheit: It’s not clear to people what that actually means, and talking about reaching “zero” isn’t exactly motivating. “Who wants to go to zero?” Marshall says. “People want to go to abundance.”

ECOQUOTE

“I also encouraged oil and gas companies to take their record profits and invest in more production. Today, American energy production is at record levels—including record oil and gas production.”—President Joe Biden in his essay at The American Prospect,