As we grapple with climate change’s devastating and escalating effects, it’s logical to ask why past administrations didn’t take steps to mitigate the crisis well before it escalated. Yet one of the most compelling, if unheeded, voices of caution came from Jimmy Carter, the country’s 39th president, who passed away on December 29.
“Jimmy Carter’s recognition of the climate threat in the 1970s was in some ways prescient, but also a recognition of the sound scientific evidence that existed even at that time,” says Jason Smerdon, a professor of climate at Columbia Climate School and a climate scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “Carter’s plans for a renewable energy transition was a road not taken that would have put us in a far better place than where we currently stand.”