During the Carter presidency, the scientific community was increasing the alarm about climate change resulting from emissions of carbon dioxide. The seeds planted by the administration to stimulate efficiency and renewables could have yielded a smooth transition toward sustainable energy and climate security. This is the story of how that didn’t happen

I have been retained pro bono by Plaintiffs to provide expert testimony regarding the historical knowledge of the U.S. federal government (including Defendants) of climate change, climate science, and alternative pathways to power the nation’s energy system other than fossil fuels. I will also testify about the decisions made by the U.S. federal government to devise and pursue energy policies and, in particular, to maintain a fossil-fuel-based energy system.

By the end of the Carter administration in January 1981, more than four decades ago, it was already very clear that:

• Defendants knew the basic science of climate change and knew that the continued burning of high levels of fossil fuels would lead to climate danger; and
• Defendants knew of pathways recommended by experts within government and others to transition away from fossil fuels, including through conservation, efficiency, and solar and other renewables.

Notwithstanding this, Defendants continued from the Carter years to the present to plan for, support, invest in, permit, and otherwise foster a national fossil-fuel-based energy system. . . .

For the year 1976, the year President Carter was elected, the United States relied on fossil fuels for 91 percent of primary energy consumption. In 2019, three years into President Trump’s term, the United States was still overwhelmingly dependent on fossil fuels—80 percent. During this 43-year period, the seeds planted during the Carter administration regarding efficiency and renewable energy could have yielded a smooth transition toward an outstanding U.S. climate performance and global leadership in climate action. Instead, those years saw only negligible action to actually reduce U.S. fossil emissions and only modest actions to promote alternatives, with the result that U.S. CO₂ emissions from energy consumption have gone up, not down, climbing by about 16 percent from 1975 to 2019.

Defendants’ actions on the national energy system over the past several decades are, in my view, the greatest dereliction of civic responsibility in the history of the Republic. And it is worse today than ever. This shocking historical conduct, government malfeasance on a grand scale, has left current and future generations enormously vulnerable to substantial danger.

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Before taking up in detail the issues of the federal government’s knowledge of both the climate danger and the opportunity to move away from fossil fuels, as well as its decision to continue pursuing fossil fuel energy, it is helpful to begin by recalling an important event in 1980 at which President Carter spoke. It illuminates the above conclusions well, in addition to my own personal engagement.

On Leap Day in 1980, President Carter’s last full year in office, the president gave an important address at the Second Environmental Decade Celebration in the White House. Before the celebration, I had an opportunity to brief the president on the forthcoming “Global 2000 Report,” which would be released later, in July of that year. In his remarks at the celebration, President Carter noted:

Just before lunch, Gus and I were discussing the long-term threats which just a few years ago were not even considered: the build-up of carbon dioxide; acid rain; the fact that 800 million human beings now suffer from lack of nourishment or disease; the fact that our population will increase 50 percent in the world by the end of this century. . . . These kinds of concerns affect you and me, and on some of them we’ve hardly begun to work on corrective action that might be proposed, much less accepted and implemented. This last decade, however, has demonstrated that we can buck the trends.

Later in his address, President Carter listed eight “preeminent environmental challenges of the next decade” and included on that list “that we faced squarely such worldwide problems as the destruction of forests, acid rain, carbon dioxide buildup, and nuclear proliferation.” President Carter also stressed the need for new energy directions. On his list of preeminent environmental challenges was “that we put this nation on a path to a sustainable energy future, one based increasingly on renewable resources and on energy conservation.” He urged that “energy conservation has got to become a way of life” and that we develop solar and renewable energy sources, noting that “true energy security can only come from solar and renewable energy technologies.”

President Carter was proud to remind the environmental leaders in attendance that day of the 1978 National Energy Act and hoped, he said, that future generations would recognize it as leading a “massive and fundamental shift toward energy efficiency.” He noted that his proposed 1981 budget called for spending over $2 billion on energy conservation, double the 1980 level.

All that said and done, President Carter’s address that day also noted, “It’s important to pursue a broad range of alternative energy sources, including synthetic fuels,” and he mentioned his “highly controversial” proposal for an Energy Mobilization Board to “eliminate unnecessary delays” in approving energy projects. Here, the president was referring in part to the energy development proposals in his famous “malaise” speech of July 15, 1979, where he proposed “the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation’s history to develop America’s own alternative sources of fuel—from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional [natural] gas, from the Sun.” For instance, the federal synfuels program was created in 1980, had a rough life, and was terminated in 1985 as the oil market improved. The legislation to create the Mobilization Board never passed. Yet in some respects, Carter’s proposals were merely ahead of their time. As I will describe subsequently, oil and gas markets are today awash with unconventional oil and gas thanks in large part to federal support and facilitation. . . .

Looking ahead, much regarding the climate issue was still to happen before the president’s term ended. Still, it is notable that forty years ago the basic outlines of the federal government’s response to the climate issue were already plainly visible: knowledge of the climate science, knowledge of alternatives to fossil fuels, and continued full-throttle support for fossil fuel development and use. This pattern would persist through subsequent administrations.

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The president’s science advisor during the Carter administration was Frank Press, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Press wrote the president about the climate threat on July 7, 1977, in a memorandum copied to James Schlesinger, who would soon become the first secretary of energy. Press’s memorandum summarized the threat:

Fossil fuel combustion has increased at an exponential rate over the last 100 years. As a result, the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ is now 12 percent above the pre-industrial revolution level and may grow to 1.5 to 2.0 times that level within 60 years. Because of the “greenhouse effect” of atmospheric CO₂, the increased concentration will induce a global climatic warming of anywhere from 0.5° to 5°C. . . .

A rapid climatic change may result in large scale crop failures at a time when an increased world population taxes agricultural limits to productivity. The urgency of the problem derives from our inability to shift rapidly to non-fossil fuel sources once the climatic effects become evident not long after the year 2000; the situation could grow out of control before alternate energy sources and other remedial actions become effective. . . .

The present state of knowledge does not justify emergency action to limit the consumption of fossil fuels in the near term. However, I believe that we must now take the potential CO₂ hazard into account in developing our long-term energy stragegy [sic].

Barely six months into the new administration, the president and his top energy advisor were apprised of the problem and its implications for the U.S. energy system. . . .

In May 1979, Frank Press asked the National Academy of Sciences to investigate this and related issues. The NAS convened a panel under the chair of MIT professor Jule Charney, and the panel met in July 1979. The concentration of CO₂ had risen that year to approximately 337 parts per million. The result was the famous Charney report. The Charney report was made widely available at the time both within and outside the administration and used government-sponsored and government-produced scientific research to support its findings. The well-known technical finding of the Charney report was as follows: “We believe, therefore, that the equilibrium surface global warming due to doubled CO₂ will be in the range 1.5°C to 4.5°C with the most probable value near 3°C.” This warming, the Charney report concluded, “will be accompanied by significant changes in regional climatic patterns.”

The summary of the Charney report findings was particularly telling in its warning:

The conclusions of this brief but intense investigation may be comforting to scientists but disturbing to policymakers. If carbon dioxide continues to increase, the study group finds no reason to doubt that climate changes will result and no reason to believe that these changes will be negligible. The conclusions of prior studies have been generally reaffirmed. However, the study group points out that the ocean, the great and ponderous flywheel of the global climate system, may be expected to slow the course of observable climatic change. A wait-and-see policy may mean waiting until it is too late.

The DOE released a report in July 1980 on its “Summary of the Carbon Dioxide Effects Research and Assessment Program,” which also reflected the scientific consensus:

It is the sense of the scientific community that carbon dioxide from the unrestrained combustion of fossil fuels is potentially the most important environmental issue facing mankind. Current predictions call for a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide as early as the middle of the next century. Climate models, using these elevated levels, predict the possibility of significant dislocations in the global distribution of climate.

This 1980 DOE report echoed the findings of the Charney report, noting that a doubling of atmospheric CO₂ was predicted to occur in the middle of the next century. Although uncertainties regarding timing and severity of warming persisted, in part due to the role of the oceans, the DOE report reflected an understanding of the dangerous impacts of the doubling of CO₂.

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The need to shift to nonfossil resources was not surprising news to President Carter or the federal government generally. Three years previously, in 1974, Congress had passed the Solar Energy Research, Development, and Demonstration Act, which inter alia called for the creation of the Solar Energy Research Institute. In this legislation, Congress found that “dependence on nonrenewable energy resources cannot be continued indefinitely” and that “it is in the nation’s interest to expedite the long-term development of renewable and nonpolluting energy resources, such as solar energy.” Congress accordingly declared that it is “the policy of the federal government to (1) pursue a vigorous and viable program of research and resource assessment of solar energy as a major source of energy for our national needs.” Congress in 1974 was aware of the need for early commercialization of renewable technologies. The legislation notes that some solar technologies were “already near the stage of commercial application,” and it called for the “demonstration of practicable means to employ solar energy on a commercial scale.”

President Carter moved rapidly in his first year in office to build on this legislation. In 1977 he created the Solar Energy Research Institute and provided it with strong leadership and significant funding. (SERI was renamed in 1991 as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.)

In April 1977, after just a few months in office, the Carter administration released the National Energy Plan, much of which would find its way into the National Energy Act of 1978. The official Fact Sheet on the president’s program said: “The cornerstone of our policy is to reduce demand through conservation” and added the following statement: “Our energy problems have the same cause as our environmental problems—wasteful use of resources. Conservation helps us solve both at once.”

The National Energy Act of 1978 launched many of the energy efficiency initiatives needed to reduce fossil fuel use and foreshadowed others. It eliminated electricity rate structures that encouraged power use and, similarly, began the process of deregulating natural gas prices. It placed a tax on new gas-guzzling automobiles, created incentives for energy-saving investments, and imposed requirements for demand-side management by electric utilities, among other measures.

At the Council on Environmental Quality, we saw a need to share with the public what government knew about the near- and long-term potential for solar and renewable energy. By April 1978 we had completed a report, “Solar Energy: Progress and Promise,” which we made widely available within and outside of the federal government.

The CEQ solar report defined “solar” to include renewables broadly and stated its goal on the first page of the foreword:

Despite the great potential of energy conservation, it alone will not be sufficient. We must also shift from oil and gas to other sources of supply. Yet, the two most readily available, coal and nuclear power, are constrained by environmental and social problems.

It should not be surprising then that many of us in government and elsewhere are returning again to the questions: What can we reasonably expect of solar energy? And how soon?

The CEQ solar report noted that “unlike coal, solar poses little risk to climate and creates little direct air pollution.”

Our conclusions at CEQ about the solar potential were more positive than we anticipated:

Based on our review, the Council on Environmental Quality has reached some tentative conclusions about what would be reasonable goals for the United States in this vital area. No one’s crystal ball works very well in examining energy futures, but based on available information and recognizing the uncertainties, we view the following goals as optimistic but achievable if we commit the necessary resources to them:

• To make economically competitive over the remainder of the century a variety of solar technologies for the production of heat, electricity and biofuels.

• To meet, by the turn of the century, a significant portion of our energy needs with solar energy. Although the actual contribution of solar energy will depend on an enormous number of decisions by the public and private sectors, we believe that under conditions of accelerated development and with a serious effort to conserve energy, solar technology could meet a quarter of our energy needs by the year 2000.

The CEQ solar report in April was followed by President Carter’s well-known Sun Day speech on May 3, 1978, in Golden, Colorado, the future home of SERI. President Carter began his remarks by noting that his energy proposals to Congress in 1977 had declared: “America’s hope for energy to sustain economic growth beyond the year 2000 rests in large measure on the development of renewable and essentially inexhaustible sources of energy.”

He continued, citing our CEQ solar report in the process:

We must begin the long, slow job of winning back our economic independence. Nobody can embargo sunlight. No cartel controls the Sun. Its energy will not run out. It will not pollute the air; it will not poison our waters. It’s free from stench and smog. . . .

The question is no longer whether solar energy works. We know it works. The only question is how to cut costs so that solar power can be used more widely and so that it will set a cap on rising oil prices. . . .

The Council on Environmental Quality recently estimated that we could meet as much as one-fourth of our energy demands from solar sources by the end of this century, and perhaps more than half by the year 2020. We must continue to make progress toward these goals.

The Department of Energy believes that photovoltaic cells can be competitive with conventional energy sources, perhaps as early as 1990. The Energy Department is working on many projects throughout this country, indeed throughout the world.

President Carter announced major new funding for solar that day, but his major proposals for action came in his June 20, 1979, Solar Energy Message to the Congress, where he outlined, as the message says, “the major elements of a national solar strategy.” “The government-wide survey I commissioned concluded that many solar technologies are available and economical today. These are here and now technologies ready for use in our homes, schools, factories, and farms.”

After making the case to Congress for major coal use to replace oil, President Carter made an equally powerful case for solar and renewables. The goal President Carter announced of 20 percent renewables by the year 2000 was slightly below our recommended 25 percent target but reflected the CEQ’s conclusions that a large shift to renewables was entirely possible with federal leadership.

In short, as early as 1978, the federal government was fully aware of and had begun acting on energy conservation and efficiency and alternative energy development policies, both in response to the oil crises that persisted through the 1970s, including the OPEC oil embargo of 1973–74, and because alternatives to fossil fuels provided greater security and would have avoided the looming threat of catastrophic climate change. . . .

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In 1979, the clash between CEQ’s call for climate protection and the federal government’s fossil fuel energy policies became stark. It was the year the often-cited Charney report was released and also the year President Carter gave his “malaise” address to the nation, with its emphasis on a massive new synfuels, coal to liquids energy initiative. I was personally involved in bringing public and government attention to this entrenched conflict.

In May 1979, I met at CEQ with Gordon MacDonald, one of the United States’ top atmospheric scientists, and Rafe Pomerance, then president of Friends of the Earth. They were seeking a stronger government response to the problem of global climate disruption. I promised to take the matter to the president and requested a reliable, scientifically credible memorandum on the problem from top scientists. The resulting July 1979 report, now more than four decades old, connected policy with scientific understanding of climate change, and was signed by four of our most distinguished American scientists—David Keeling, Roger Revelle, George Woodwell (lead author), and MacDonald.

The contents of the 1979 report were alarming. The report predicted “a warming that will probably be conspicuous within the next twenty years,” and it called for early action: “Enlightened policies in the management of fossil fuels and forests can delay or avoid these changes, but the time for implementing the policies is fast passing.”

Here are some further important excerpts from the 1979 report:

• Man is setting in motion a series of events that seem certain to cause a significant warming of world climates over the next decades unless mitigating steps are taken immediately. The cause is the accumulation of CO2 and other heat-absorbing gases in the atmosphere.

• If we wait to prove that the climate is warming before we take steps to alleviate the CO2 build-up, the effects will be well underway and still more difficult to control. . . . The potential disruptions are sufficiently great to warrant the incorporation of the CO2 problem into all considerations of policy in the development of energy.

• Steps toward control are necessary now and should be a part of the national policy in management of sources of energy.

• The first element of any policy that offers the hope of being effective is conservation. Limitation of the rate of exploitation of fuels is possible. The rate is controlled currently by price, taxation, and regulation. It can be controlled as a matter of policy. All actions of government should be reviewed to determine effects on the total use of carbon-based fuels.

• It is our conviction that an appropriate reaction to the mounting worldwide squeeze on supplies of energy requires consideration of the CO2 problem as an intrinsic part of any proposed policy on energy.

The report was very clear on the urgency of bringing the climate issue into the formulation of national energy policy generally and the future of fossil fuels particularly. Unfortunately, later that same July the president would call for a major program to develop synthetic fuels (oil and gas) from coal and other hydrocarbons. The Woodwell–MacDonald–Revelle–Keeling report to CEQ contained a major warning about this policy. It strongly criticized the president’s programs to increase coal production, stressing that synthetic fuels from coal and other hydrocarbons would release an estimated 2.3 times the amount of carbon dioxide per Btu compared to natural gas. The report made clear that the new synfuels policy the Department of Energy had developed for the president was inconsistent with protecting the climate system.

This shot across the bow of the administration’s plan to greatly expand domestic fossil fuel production was covered well in the press. The New York Times reported on July 10, 1979, that CEQ found the report to be historic and an important policy guiding document to bring energy policy in line with climate protection policy. According to the New York Times:

The new report has been sent to the president and other administration leaders. Gus Speth of the Council of Environmental Quality, a White House advisory group, said, 'The report is an extremely important perhaps historic statement.' He added that he expected the report to be 'very influential in government decision making.' Mr. Speth also said that the report had shown that 'the country needs to address the carbon dioxide issue squarely before going down the synfuels road.'. . . Environmentalists have warned of potentially harmful effects from the rapid development of synthetic fuels, such as the release of toxics into the air and water, the rapid consumption of scarce water resources and devastation of the land for coal and shale mining. But little attention has been paid in the past by environmentalists and policy makers to carbon dioxide, which is odorless, colorless and poses no immediate threat to human health.

Nonetheless, the 1979 report, the media coverage, and our efforts at CEQ did not deter the administration from announcing the synfuels program a few days later. Nonetheless, the central policy issue—climate protection versus fossil fuel development—was joined in the policy arena for the first time. DOE pushed back hard against CEQ and the climate scientists’ 1979 report. As part of its push back, I recall that DOE produced a graph showing U.S. fossil fuel use and CO₂ emissions growing so rapidly in future decades that the increment from synfuels development was simply dwarfed.

We were determined at CEQ to continue to press the matter of aligning energy policy with what the climate scientists were telling us was necessary to control climate change. We issued three subsequent reports to that end. Each received considerable media attention. . . .

Our third, and most extensive, effort at CEQ to force a successful integration of energy and climate policy was not completed until around the time that President Carter unexpectedly lost the 1980 election. In “Global Energy Futures and the Carbon Dioxide Problem,” we presented rigorously developed computer models of alternative energy futures and the climate risks associated with them. Based on this analysis, our recommendations to the federal government echoed the “Global 2000” report and were as follows:

• assign a high priority to incorporating the CO₂ issue into U.S. energy policy planning;

• increase reliance on energy conservation and renewable sources of energy; and

• undertake new and expanded cooperative international efforts to address CO₂ issues.

I summarized these conclusions in my preface to the “Global Energy Futures and the Carbon Dioxide Problem” report:

The CO₂ problem should be taken seriously in new ways: it should become a factor in making energy policy and not simply be the subject of scientific investigation. Every effort should be made to ensure that nations are not compelled to choose between the risks of energy shortages and the risks of CO₂. This goal requires making a priority commitment here and abroad to energy efficiency and to renewable energy resources; it also requires avoiding a commitment to fossil fuels that would preclude holding CO₂ to tolerable levels.

Though the “Global Energy Futures and the Carbon Dioxide Problem” report was issued by a lame duck White House, it was widely distributed in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere and garnered considerable media attention. I was quoted commenting on the report as follows in an article in the New York Times about the report:

Gus Speth, chairman of the council, conceded that there was still some scientific uncertainty about the timing and effects of the carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere. But Mr. Speth said that, given the magnitude of the risks and the fact that industrial countries were now formulating long-range energy plans, the carbon dioxide buildup must be considered in energy policy decisions. He said it would be too late to change course once the impact of the buildup began to be felt.

The CEQ report recommended that a safe maximum level (or cap) for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere be established. In the late 1970s, it was thought that the CO₂ cap could be 50 percent higher than preindustrial levels, which would be approximately 420 ppm. (Today, climate scientists say that level is too high and that we have already exceeded safe bounds. See below.) The CEQ report addressed favorably a scenario that capped the buildup of CO₂ in the atmosphere at 50 percent above the pre-industrial level. On this matter, the New York Times article said:

The level of carbon dioxide is currently estimated at 15 to 25 percent above pre-industrial levels existing around the year 1800. One recommendation of the report is that agreement be reached by industrialized nations on a safe maximum level for carbon dioxide in the air. It suggested a level 50 percent higher than that of pre-industrial times as an upper limit.

The CO₂ pre-industrial concentration is generally taken to be 280 ppm. A 50 percent increase would be 420 ppm. In July 2020, the atmosphere’s CO₂ concentration reached 414 ppm, and atmospheric CO₂ will likely reach 420 ppm, the 50 percent increase mark, in just a few years. Many, perhaps most, climate scientists now believe a 50 percent increase is too risky and would want the CO₂ buildup to stay below 25 percent. But it is noteworthy that the CEQ analysts were able to suggest an upper bound that was off only by a factor of two almost four decades ago.

President Carter was, I believe, prepared to tackle the climate issue in some meaningful way had he been reelected. But that was not to be. I think he would have asked his agencies for their ideas and plans on how to reduce U.S. CO₂ emissions and would have led the United States on a very different path. It was not to be.

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In parallel with its strong actions on energy conservation and its first-of-a-kind initiatives on renewables, and despite repeated warnings about the climate risks of fossil fuels, the Carter administration vigorously supported not only continued deep U.S. reliance on fossil fuels but also a much larger reliance on coal in particular.

Coal use in the United States did indeed grow dramatically during and immediately after the Carter administration, while oil imports declined equally dramatically for a variety of reasons.

When Carter came into office in 1977, the country was still experiencing “gas lines” shock and stinging from its international oil vulnerability. In the decade before 1977, U.S. oil imports had increased an astounding sixfold, and the OPEC oil embargo of 1973–74 had deeply shaken American consumers and their politicians alike. The oil embargo gave rise to a major push to reduce oil imports by promoting “fuel switching”—shifting electricity generation from oil and natural gas to coal—and, some hoped, by using “synthetic” liquid fuels based on coal, tar sands, and oil shale. These heavier hydrocarbons produce more CO₂ per Btu when burned and are thus more harmful to climate. The key policy initiative in Carter’s National Energy Program, a program put forth early in his first year in office, was, as the April 20, 1977, Fact Sheet said, “We must reduce our vulnerability to potentially devastating embargoes. We can protect ourselves from uncertain supplies by reducing our demand for oil, making the most of our abundant resources such as coal, and developing a strategic petroleum reserve.” The administration and the Congress pursued this objective with many policy initiatives, central to which was “fuel switching”—the shift in electrical power generation from oil and natural gas to coal. Fuel switching was among the policies strongly encouraged in the 1978 National Energy Act.

In addition to expanding coal leasing on federal lands, the Carter administration also joined with the Congress in promoting oil leases on the outer continental shelf. In signing the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act Amendments of 1978, Carter said, “This legislation will provide the needed framework for moving forward once again with a balanced and well-coordinated leasing program to assure that OCS energy resources contribute even more to our nation’s domestic energy supplies.”

At the end of his administration, Carter gathered information from throughout the federal government on what had been accomplished over the four years past. I recall working with CEQ staff to prepare our memorandum to the president responding to this White House request. The result was Carter’s January 16, 1981, State of the Union Annual Message to the Congress. It was an amazingly comprehensive 80-page document delivered to the Congress only in writing. In summarizing the administration’s accomplishments, the first one listed by the president was: “Almost all of our comprehensive energy program have been enacted, and the Department of Energy has been established to administer the program.” Here, regarding legislative enactments, Carter was referring mainly to the National Energy Act of 1978 and the National Energy Security Act of 1980.

President Carter offered an overall summary of U.S. energy policy that illustrates the power and control of the federal government over the national energy system, and the push for fossil fuel development notwithstanding the dire warning on climate change from ongoing fossil dependence:

Since I took office, my highest legislative priorities have involved the reorientation and redirection of U.S. energy activities and for the first time, to establish a coordinated national energy policy. The struggle to achieve that policy has been long and difficult, but the accomplishments of the past four years make clear that our country is finally serious about the problems caused by our overdependence on foreign oil. Our progress should not be lost. We must rely on and encourage multiple forms of energy production—coal, crude oil, natural gas, solar, nuclear, synthetics—and energy conservation. The framework put in place over the last four years will enable us to do this.

He then listed a number of specific accomplishments that underscore the commitment to fossil fuels both by the administration and by the Congress:

• Under my program of phased decontrol, domestic crude oil price controls will end September 30, 1981. As a result exploratory drilling activities have reached an all-time high;

• Prices for new natural gas are being decontrolled under the Natural Gas Policy Act—and natural gas production is now at an all-time high; the supply shortages of several years ago have been eliminated; . . .

• The Synthetic Fuels Corporation has been established to help private companies build the facilities to produce energy from synthetic fuels; . . .

• Coal production and consumption incentives have been increased, and coal production is now at its highest level in history; . . .

• In 1979 the Interior Department held six OCS [outer continental shelf] lease sales, the greatest number ever. . . .

• [T]he first general competitive federal coal lease sale in ten years will be held this month.

The United States was about 90 percent dependent on fossil energy at the beginning of the Carter administration and close to 90 percent at the end; there was only a slight decline in fossil dependency of 2–3 percent. Meanwhile, the fossil fuel mix was shifting toward coal and away from oil imports. Total U.S. energy use had declined slightly, and gross domestic product had grown about 10 percent in real terms, so the overall energy efficiency of the economy had improved. A slow shift to renewables had started. It can be said that the energy policy of the Carter years was for the first time truly “all of the above”—and that included fossil fuels as the vast majority of our energy supply.

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It is clear looking back that, notwithstanding the unsupported climate denialism that has pervaded American politics off and on since the Carter years, and especially now, it is impressive how much was understood about climate change and the role of fossil fuels in causing it by the late 1970s, four decades ago. Enough was known, for example, to suggest a prudent upper bound for the buildup in the atmosphere of the principal greenhouse gas, CO₂, a limit that many reasonable people would fall on their knees to achieve today. For President Carter, as he said repeatedly, and for many of us inside the federal government, the path ahead was clear for our climate system and our nation’s security and independence: energy efficiency, conservation, and renewables.

On Ronald Reagan’s Inauguration Day, John Oakes, a member of the New York Times editorial board, penned a warning for the incoming president in an article entitled “For Reagan, a Ticking Ecological ‘Time Bomb.’” The New York Times piece accurately reflected the pivotal moment for our nation’s energy and climate systems and the need to act swiftly to address the looming crisis. In it, Oakes wrote:

The rapid environmental degradation of this planet is a time bomb, as great a threat to both our national and our global survival as is the threat of nuclear annihilation. . . . The environmental crisis alluded to by Mr. Carter and described by a recent Government report, 'Global 2000,' is different in quality and degree from anything that has gone before in the history of the human race.

Oakes went on to stress the climate threat: “The mad rush from oil to coal means more poisoned lakes from coal-produced acid rain, fouler air, and a prospective rise in world temperature (from accumulated carbon dioxide) that could dangerously raise the level of the seas.” He pointed out that these threats “cannot be long ignored by the Reagan administration.” Oakes said this about solutions:

What can we do about all this? In a sequel to 'Global 2000,' called 'Global Future: A Time to Act,' a government task force headed by Gus Speth, chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, has just proposed a string of recommendations to halt the slide into the environmental disaster that is sure to come if the new President and the new Congress fail to give it their urgent attention. This is a crucial issue—today. Like human life itself, once ecological systems are destroyed, they can never be recovered.

Sadly, we know now that the Reagan administration and the Congress did indeed fail to give these issues their urgent attention.

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