The Legacy of the First Green President

Carter recognized the potential of solar energy and hoped the country could get 20 percent of all its power from the sun by the year 2000. While that goal has still not been attained, renewables make up more than 20 percent of generated energy.

Before he was president, Arab countries had imposed an embargo on oil exports to the U.S. because of its support of Israel. Among other things, the embargo created long lines at gas pumps. Carter installed solar panels on the White House roof in 1979, famously saying that “nobody can embargo sunlight and no cartel controls the sun.” He added that solar energy does not pollute the air or poison water. President Reagan removed the panels seven years later along with the tax credits and clean energy research money Carter fought so hard to provide. President Obama installed a new solar system in 2013.

In 1978, Carter signed a bill that imposed penalties on low-mileage gas cars and provided incentives for wind and solar technology. However, he was criticized because the law also encouraged electric utilities and industries to convert from oil and gas to coal. In 1980, he told Illinois miners that America was the Saudi Arabia of coal and that his goal as president was to see world energy markets for Arab oil replaced with Illinois coal.

Carter took actions to protect the environment and wildlife. Shortly after becoming president, he vetoed many water projects encouraged by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that he said would harm stream and river habitats around the country. President Carter signed the Superfund act into law in 1980, giving the EPA the authority to clean up hazardous waste sites and spills

The Carter administration established the Department of Energy and supported the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which was first known as the Solar Energy Research Institute. In a famous speech that drew ridicule, he spoke from the White House library, while wearing a cardigan sweater and urged all Americans to turn down their thermostats to 65 degrees in the day and 55 at night to save natural gas.

He will also be remembered for action he took in Alaska, signing a bill that protected 100 million acres, about the size of California, which includes the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that is home to bears, caribou, wolves, and more.

In 2017, Carter was still promoting solar energy. He leased ten acres of his farmland for solar power and it now supplies more than half of the energy for his home town of Plains, Georgia.

The ban will also include parts of the Bering Sea in Alaska and eastern regions of the Gulf of Mexico that have been eyed by the oil and gas industry to be part of its offshore plans. In total, the ban covers an area about equal to 25 percent of all U.S. land.  

The Washington Post reported that Biden’s action could affect the Gulf of Mexico the most. That area makes up around 15 percent of U.S. oil production centered in waters off Louisiana. The coasts of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina are already under an oil exploration moratorium imposed by President Trump during his first term.

While environmentalists were supportive of Biden’s intended move, industry criticized it, touting its safety record, but the ban might be hard to undo. President Barack Obama prohibited oil and gas exploration in parts of the Northern Bering Sea off the west coast of Alaska, and a federal judge ruled five years ago that the order could not be reversed except by an act of Congress. There is already some movement in Congress to do just that, with some, like Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) calling it a war on American energy.

In other actions, President Biden will go to California this week to designate two national monuments in regions that are sacred to Native Americans, the Chuckwalla National Monument in Southern California near Joshua Tree National Park and the Sáttítla National Monument near Oregon. The designations would prohibit drilling, mining, solar farms, and other industry in the monuments.  

A team of researchers led by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona analyzed tea bags made from three types of polymers: polypropylene, nylon-6, and cellulose. They found that, to varying degrees, each one releases micro and nanoplastics (MNPLs) during the steeping process.

Polypropylene shredded the most, infusing around 1.2 billion particles of plastic per milliliter, which is around 20 drops of tea. Bags made of cellulose released 135 million particles, and the nylon ones released 8.18 million particles per milliliter.

Where did all that plastic go? The team stained the particles and injected them into cells from a human intestine to track their movement. They found that certain digestive cells that produce mucus in the gut absorbed the highest amount of plastic, and that some of the particles had even entered the nucleus of the cells where genetic material is kept.

One of the study’s authors, Ricardo Marcos Dauder, told Newsweek that the research suggests that nanoplastics can easily "cross biological barriers" into the blood and then affect different organs.

Tea bags are just one of many ways we are exposed to plastics in our food. The particles have been found in water bottles, packaging, as well as the food itself, and scientists are just beginning to understand the health impacts. There are ways to minimize your risk from tea. Several brands claim they make bags without plastics, such as Traditional Medicinals, Yogi Tea, and Numi. You can also buy loose leaf tea instead.

The study was published in the journal Chemosphere.

Wardrobe aside, pistachios are gaining popularity because of numerous health benefits from preventing heart disease, managing blood sugar, and reducing colon cancer risk to being a good source of protein, antioxidants, and fiber. A study from Tufts University last October found that lutein in pistachios can significantly improve eye health—especially by preventing macular degeneration.

But there is more than meets the eye, so to speak. U.S. pistachios, which are mostly grown in California, are very drought tolerant because they have deep roots that can sustain the trees during dry periods, making them an attractive alternative for farmers to grow instead of thirsty almonds. Their growing popularity, as the Guardian explains, is at the intersection of climate and the marketplace, where, as global warming makes periods of wet and dry conditions more extreme, sustainable crops are needed that can cope.

Pistachios generated nearly $3 billion in California last year, and in the past decade, the United States bypassed Iran to become the world’s top exporter of the nut—which technically is a drupe—a fruit similar to peaches, plums, and cherries where an outer fleshy part surrounds a pit with a seed inside. Hey, we don’t make the rules.