obituary American flags throughout the United States are flying at half-mast to honor the life of Jimmy Carter, the 39th and longest-lived US preside

Jimmy Carter set the solar, space, and environmental pace

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2024-12-30 22:30:04

obituary American flags throughout the United States are flying at half-mast to honor the life of Jimmy Carter, the 39th and longest-lived US president, who died Sunday, December 29, at the age of 100.

Conflicts with Congress and international politics may have set Carter back, but he still managed to change the face of space and environmental technology.

Carter famously had 32 solar panels installed on the roof of the White House, which were used to heat water. Despite his prediction that the panels would still be atop the roof of the Presidential residence "supplying cheap, efficient energy" in the year 2000, successor Ronald Reagan had them torn off while redoing the roof in 1986. Carter had the last laugh there, though: President George W. Bush brought solar back, and Barack Obama added modern panels during his administration that are still in service.

Carter was also a life-long environmentalist, with his dream of a green future leading to the establishment of the Department of Energy as part of his mission to expand alternatives to fossil fuels. That same DoE now leads the charge on developing fusion technology that might represent the future of energy generation - if it can be scaled up, of course. Carter was also responsible for the creation of the superfund program that gave the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to designate heavily contaminated sites and earmark cash for their cleanup.