[earthman]

Jimmy Carter was ahead of his time and proof that a prersident (or a politician) who is honest will not get re-elected. People don't want to hear the truth. So we voted him and got what we deserved.
Carter's hard work for humanity since his presidency proves what he is made of. He has my respect.
Americans are still as dense as then as evidenced by our last election.
Would that the truth would come out about the Bush administration, the economy, 911, the war in Iraq.
Makes it hard to have any hope at all.

[arretium]

How about a little tongue in check criticism?
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cool Hand Linc', 'P')ull your head out MQ. I'm part of the 51% you refer too. Most Conservatives? I don't think so. Maybe the conservatives who are most vocal. Oh ya that doesn't follow along with your agenda.

[Overlyhonest]

First back last October I picked up Matthew Savinar book and gained a new and quite unfun perspective on the world.
Today though I came across an essay on energy bulletin. The author took to many liberties for my tastes so I went to his source material “two speeches by President Jimmy Carter” and I am just floored. I was probably out ridding my bike when all this was going down so have never listened to these speeches until today.
I now know that an AMERICAN PRESIDENT saw what was coming, he told the people and tried to implement a plan to prevent it. Most telling he talks about the two different paths we could take and what would happen if we took the easy one. They never taught this in American history….but they will.
Sayings like “reap what you have sown” comes to mind.

Jimmy Carter April 18, 1977
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/fil ... nergy.html

Jimmy Carter July 15, 1979
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/fil ... risis.html

PS, I hate to give product endorsements that I do not get paid for but if you are too lazy to read these in their entirety get Text Aloud to read for you. It is free.
http://www.nextup.com/TextAloud/download.html

{Edited by MQ--Or for mp3, go to this link:}

http://millercenter.virginia.edu/scripp ... es/carter/

[Evltre]

I'm interested to know from anyone who was around then (I was 2 in 1977) what happened after those speeches? How did people react? Didn't they vote him out pretty quickly?

[DomusAlbion]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Evltre', 'I')'m interested to know from anyone who are around then (I was 2 in 1977) what happened after those speeches? How did people react? Didn't they vote him out pretty quickly?

[blackaddr]

yeah I was shocked when i heard that speech aswell

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/mp3clip ... idence.mp3

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeche ... idence.htm

an american president actually 'got it'

[MicroHydro]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Evltre', 'I')'m interested to know from anyone who was around then (I was 2 in 1977) what happened after those speeches? How did people react? Didn't they vote him out pretty quickly?

[RonMN]

The problem was then...the same as it is now...PEOPLE DONT FRIGGIN WANNA HEAR IT!
Jimmy Carter bought a 1 way ticket out of office by saying it.
That is the sad truth to the matter...now...look in the mirror!

[Overlyhonest]

Well I can no longer feel bad for what might come.
If I saw a person purposely bashing their hand with a hammer I would not feel any sympathy for their pain. I see little difference in what American and western society has done to itself in its willful ignorance.

[Evltre]

Thanks for posting those links - I'd heard about thoses speeches but never read them. I've found a lot of people of that generation use him to debunk the whole PO theory - yeah yeah we've heard this all before and look what happended then.

[bobeau]

Just a quick question coming from sheer ignorance to past consumption levels of the world at large - in his first speech he talks of a global peak in the early 80s, just years later. 5% increase per year, year after year, up from 60Mb/d.

Once Reagan hit the scene, as is mentioned in this thread, the energy worries of the 70s quickly became a distant memory. Instead of 5-8 years to peak it turned into nearly 30. What major events transpired that caused his short term prediction to be so far off?

[peripato]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bobeau', 'J')ust a quick question coming from sheer ignorance to past consumption levels of the world at large - in his first speech he talks of a global peak in the early 80s, just years later. 5% increase per year, year after year, up from 60Mb/d.
Once Reagan hit the scene, as is mentioned in this thread, the energy worries of the 70s quickly became a distant memory. Instead of 5-8 years to peak it turned into nearly 30. What major events transpired that caused his short term prediction to be so far off?

[CarlinsDarlin]

My, how times have changed:
Quote from the Crisis of Confidence speech:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '.')..America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.

[ArimoDave]

Carter did do one bad thing, however. And, being a nuclear engineer he should have known better. In an attempt to reduce nuclear weapons proliferation, he signed into law the one that prevents the US from building breeder reactors.

This causes us to throw away or otherwise ship out of the country a lot of potential energy from uranium 238. U238 when it accepts a neutron becomes U239 then decays into Plutonium 239 which . . . and eventually becomes usable fuel. (Sorry for the ellipsis (three dots) but I didn't want to completely bore you with the details. Easily looked up on the net though.)

[Leanan]

I was a kid when Carter was president, and I didn't like him then. He did come across as ineffectual and weak.
But from an adult perspective, I can see that the voters got what they wanted. In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, people wanted a political outsider in the White House. Someone free from the corruption of established DC politicians like Nixon. The only problem is, outsiders have no connections. Carter did not have the kind of ties to Congress and other DC movers and shakers that the job of president really requires. He couldn't get anything done for that reason, and it made him look weak.

But yes, we knew about peak oil back in the 1970s. The Club of Rome wrote Limits to Growth in 1972. Because of the oil embargo, gas was rationed and there were long lines at the pumps. People could fill up on even or odd days, depending on their license plate numbers. With all that going on, it was hard to deny the reality of peak oil. I remember my dad telling me we'd run out of oil in 30 or 40 years - and he's a conservative scientist, not prone to jumping to conclusions.
No one was terribly worried, though. 30 or 40 years is a long time, and Americans were full of confidence back then. We'd recently put men on the moon, in less than a decade. Surely we could solve the peak oil problem just as easily.

And we did do some things. Speed limits were lowered to 55 mph by federal law, in order to promote conservation. New standards for fuel efficiency were set for cars, and building codes were changed to make homes and offices more energy-efficient. Money was poured into alternative energy research: fusion, fission, ethanol, wind, geothermal, solar, and yes, even biodiesel from algae.
But when oil prices fell back in the '80s, people forgot all about peak oil. Eventually, even the speed limits were raised above 55 mph, with most drivers forgetting they were set that low for fuel efficiency, not for safety.

I think most people still assume that technology will save us. Even though we don't have much time left, and decades of research and billions of dollars have not found workable alternative energy sources.

[MonteQuest]

Due to my correspondence with David Stanhope at the Carter Library, Carter's April 18, 1977 Energy Speech to the nation is now available on-line for the first time in mp3 format at the Miller Center. You will find his words striking and prophetic. It is so timely, it could be delivered today and not miss a beat.

I will post it here for a while as a sticky, along with adding it to our PO Media.

http://webstorage1.mcpa.virginia.edu/li ... 7_0418.mp3


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')ear Mr. Myers:
Thank you for your audio inquiry of November 30th. Unfortunately, there is no online copy of President Carter's April 18, 1977 Energy Speech. I hope to send a copy to the Miller Center of Public Affairs website, which will post the speech on their Carter Speeches page at http://millercenter.virginia.edu/scripp ... es/carter/
They currently have several Carter energy speeches on their page.
Please contact us if we can be of further assistance.
David Stanhope
Archivist
Jimmy Carter Library & Museum

[erl]

One thing I do remember about the Carter energy speech is that he called it the "moral equivalent of war."

That phrase became the much ridiculed acronym "MEOW."

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Evltre', 'I')'m interested to know from anyone who was around then (I was 2 in 1977) what happened after those speeches? How did people react? Didn't they vote him out pretty quickly?

[Evltre]

Well from a hindsight view - what a legend for doing what he did - and shame on people for not sorting it out then and there

[Grimnir]

Interesting that Carter was making the same predictions the PO crowd is today, and that basically none of them came true in the time frame he indicated. Why not? How can we be sure the new batch of predictions is more accurate?