84. Saturday Morning Rant

Seeing all these cute solar panels on everything from path lights to oven mits takes me back to the year Jimmy Carter was elected president. When my gradeschool teacher Mr. Johnson did a poll in our class asking whose parents voted D or R, I was the only kid in my Northern CA 5th grade class who raised my hand for D. I knew little about Carter, except that he had really big teeth and my dad and all his friends seemed really excited about his ideas and the prospect of him becoming president. In the late 70's, solar energy was something that was considered outsider and radical and something crazy hippies and arty types tinkered with.

Carter, "...We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren. We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources."


In his campaign against Reagan in 1980:

"The year 2000 is just less than 20 years away, just four Presidential elections after this one. Children born this year will come of age in the 21st century. The time to shape the world of the year 2000 is now. The decisions of the next few years will set our course, perhaps an irreversible course, and the most important of all choices will be made by the American people at the polls less than 3 months from tonight..."

"The choice could not be more clear nor the consequences more crucial. In one of the futures we can choose, the future that you and I have been building together, I see security and justice and peace. I see a future of economic security-security that will come from tapping our own great resources of oil and gas, coal and sunlight... I see a future of justice--the justice of good jobs, decent health care, quality education, a full opportunity for all people regardless of color or language or religion; the simple human justice of equal rights for all men and for all women, guaranteed equal rights at last under the Constitution of the United States of America. And I see a future of peace--a peace born of wisdom and based on a fairness toward all countries of the world, a peace guaranteed both by American military strength and by American moral strength as well.

But there is another possible future. In that other future I see despair--despair of millions who would struggle for equal opportunity and a better life and struggle alone. And I see surrender--the surrender of our energy future to the merchants of oil, the surrender of our economic future to a bizarre program of massive tax cuts for the rich, service cuts for the poor, and massive inflation for everyone."




As ever, Ms. Jane D


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