With his passing at age 100, President Jimmy Carter is being remembered this month for his contributions to global health, peace, and democracy promotion around the world. During his presidency, Carter was also a prescient environmentalist who was an early adopter of renewable energy, a conservationist of 56 million square miles of Alaskan wilderness, and one of the first leaders to promote sustainable development. In his 44-year post presidency, he advocated for much of what would later become the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In fact, you could say he was a pioneer of many of the topics taught in environmental science and human geography classrooms today.
President During an Energy Crisis
Carter had the difficult task of navigating through a period of oil embargoes (and resulting shortages) at a time when the U.S. was dependent on foreign oil to meet its energy needs. Amid the instability after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, oil prices soared, affecting global markets. Determined to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, Carter sought to spur innovation on alternative sources, including renewable energy. His administration created the U.S. Department of Energy, in part, to promote energy conservation and energy independence, and develop alternative sources of energy to reduce the use of fossil fuels.
He also asked Americans to play their part to conserve energy at home. In his February 2, 1977 televised “fireside chat” to the nation on our energy situation, he donned a cardigan sweater and urged Americans to turn down their thermostats to 65 degrees. Though the speech was officially titled “President Jimmy Carter’s Report to the American People on Energy,” it became known as “the sweater speech.”
Way ahead of his time, Carter had 32 solar panels installed on the White House roof to heat the water at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. (These were subsequently removed by President Reagan.) His administration founded the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI) in 1977, tasked with finding ways to achieve 20 percent of the nation’s energy (not just electricity) from renewable resources by the year 2000. Had those priorities continued in the years that followed, we may have been further along in reaching that goal. While the U.S. now generates over 20 percent of the country’s electricity with renewable sources, less than 10 percent of all energy production comes from renewables.
Global Countdown Report
In May 1977, President Carter directed the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the Department of State, along with other agencies, to “make a one-year study of the probable changes in the world’s population, natural resources, and environment through the end of the century.” Many of the study’s findings proved remarkably accurate, including global population growing by more than 50 percent from 1975 to 2000. The study culminated in the Global 2000 Report, which outlined global challenges including population pressures, forest loss, species extinction, depleted water resources, pollution, deteriorating agricultural soil, and the long-term threat of global warming (or what a handful of scientists then referred to as “carbon dioxide pollution”). While clear-eyed about the daunting tasks of achieving a sustainable future, the report also noted hopeful signs for global cooperation and a path forward for a better world.
One of the first teaching kits published by our Population Education Program was The Global 2000 Countdown Kit in 1982, which included 14 units created around the commission’s topics and far-sighted recommendations for environmental health and human well-being into the 21st century. Over 40 years later, these challenges, and the classroom lessons developed to address them, are as relevant now as they were then.
Lasting Work on Global Health and Peace
Perhaps President Carter’s most enduring legacy is the work of The Carter Center, which, over the past 42 years has made significant progress in alleviating human suffering and promoting human rights around the world. The Center has been a leader in working to eradicate Guinea worm disease, river blindness, lymphatic filariasis, and many other preventable diseases that disable and kill millions of people around in the least developed countries.
Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, President Carter spent decades mediating conflicts around the globe, promoting democracy with free and fair elections, and improving living conditions in some of the poorest regions of the world. He and First Lady Rosalynn Carter promoted human dignity in the U.S., building homes through Habitat for Humanity and promoting awareness of mental health issues.
President Carter tries to comfort 6-year-old Ruhama Issah at Savelugu Hospital as a Carter Center Volunteer, Adams Bawa, dresses her extremely painful guinea worm wound.
Long before the United Nations adopted their Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, the Carter Center’s work centered around many of those goals. In fact, out of a total of 468 publications by Carter Center researchers from 1986-2022, 425 (91%) are associated with 11 of the SDGs, most notably SDG3 – Good Health and Well-being.
A Legacy for Educators
President Carter also established the Department of Education in 1979, to make quality education for all a federal priority, and elevate it to a cabinet-level position. His campaign promise to create this department garnered the first presidential endorsement from the National Education Association. Carter’s political career started on his local county school board in 1955, and his advocacy for equity in education and school desegregation was part of his work in the Georgia legislature and as governor.
As a former nuclear scientist, President Carter championed STEM education and opportunities for science and technology to improve lives. With his decades advocating for human rights, peace and human well-being, he was a role-model for engaged citizenship.
The Carter Center and Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum sites offer a number of lesson plans for secondary teachers on civics using primary sources, conflict resolution, and global health.
Photo credits: Presidential portrait of Jimmy Carter (Department of Defense. Department of the Navy. Naval Photographic Center, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons); President Carter and solar panels (“President Jimmy Carter speaking in front of solar panels placed on the West Wing roof of the White House [6/20/1979]” from the Library of Congress, no known copyright restrictions); President Carter comforting child (Photo courtesy of The Carter Center)
