Several thousand solar panels glow in the unusually hot February sun in Plains, Georgia.
They are located on land owned by former US President Jimmy Carter, which produces energy rather than the region’s usual cash crops like peanuts, cotton and corn.
Jimmy Carter “wanted to inspire people, he wanted to show other property owners that they could create solar power on their property, he wanted to provide clean local energy to people,” Jill Stuckey told AFP. a longtime friend of the Carter family, walking down a dirt road leading to the lot where solar panels are located.
In 2017, President Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, cut the ribbon inaugurating Plains’ first solar farm, part of a long fight for nature and energy conservation.
Today, the 98-year-old former US president is in hospice care at home in his small hometown he made famous.
Jimmy Carter is one of the US presidents with the strongest environmental record, a status he earned long before tackling climate change became a global priority issue. The former president has many green initiatives to his credit.
During his tenure from 1977 to 1981, he decided that millions of acres of Alaskan wilderness would be considered federal protected land.
He also enacted the Superfund program for cleaning up hazardous waste sites and spills. And he also created the Ministry of Energy.
In 1973, oil prices soared following an OPEC oil embargo against the United States, inflation and stagflation were to mark the years to come.
Prices soared again in 1979 after the Iranian Revolution, frustrating American consumers and sinking Carter’s popularity, no doubt scuttling his bid for a second term.
Aware of the impact of foreign turbulence on American markets, Carter was quick to encourage Americans to be responsible with their consumption.
During his first “fireside chat” broadcast on television in February 1977, it was a sweater-clad Jimmy Carter who appeared to encourage Americans to turn down their heating to save energy.
Later, he had several dozen solar panels installed on the roof of the White House, a decision well ahead of the time. His successor in the White House Ronald Reagan had them removed.
Carter was “always thinking of others,” adds Jill Stuckey, noting that the former president’s interest in the environment started very early.
Perhaps it was the windmill on his parents’ farm in the 1930s that was the trigger for his environmental fight.
In the one-story farmhouse where he grew up, the leaves of a magnolia rustle softly to the sound of birdsong.
The site, now part of the National Park Service, is “where Mr. Jimmy first started thinking about using green energy,” says volunteer Dorner Carmichael.
When Carter’s family finally had running water in their house and barn thanks to the windmill, “it was just a game-changer,” he adds.
When Carter was young, he would go fishing and canoeing in the nearby forest.
“Jimmy Carter was a man of the land. He knew every nook and cranny of Sumter County, Georgia,” says Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley.
Carter, he said, was by nature “someone who didn’t believe in wasting natural resources” and had a “deep affinity” for nature.
02/26/2023 09:26:48 – Plains (United States) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
