Today, Patagonia Founder Yvon Chouinard issued the following statement on the death of President Jimmy Carter:
There has been plenty of time—more than 40 years—to reflect on how well President Carter did his job, and to compare his performance with those who came after him.
Jimmy Carter was so far ahead of his time we are only now getting around to finish (or resume) much of what he started that his successors unraveled. Ronald Reagan took down the solar water-heater panels President Carter installed on the White House roof. The Department of Energy President Carter established in 1977 devoted serious research funds to getting us past fossil fuels, reflecting his goal that, by 2000, 20 percent of our energy should come from renewables. That was scrapped by his successor; we’re only just past 20 percent now.
President Carter vetoed pork-barrel dam and river diversion projects long before the average politician understood the harm they cause to water and wildlife and how little they do for the economy. This he discovered as governor of Georgia, when the Army Corps of Engineers proposed damming the Flint Ridge River, which Carter had twice canoed. After close-questioning its economic benefits and citing the potential (and permanent) environmental loss, he opposed the dam’s construction—and ever afterward developed a healthy skepticism of dam proposals that came across his desk.
What President Carter did create has endured. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) he signed into law in 1980 preserves more than 104 million acres, including 57 million acres as designated Wilderness. Overall, his administration protected more land and water than any since Theodore Roosevelt’s.
No president since Jimmy Carter has had the moxie to address purposeless consumption, as he did in a 1979 speech, saying that in a nation once proud of “hard work, strong families, and close-knit communities,” too many of us now lacked purpose and worshipped consumerism. That’s truer now than then. And no ex-president since Carter has been such a strong advocate, in deed as well as word, for the protection and promotion of democracy at home and abroad. He could see the threats to the planet caused by greed and heedlessness. He had both the courage to look reality in the face and the foresight to see a path toward a better future. And he embodied indigenous leader Gerald Amos’s belief that “the most important right we have is the right to be responsible.”
Jimmy Carter recognized the genius of place—not just the importance of unspoiled areas that might be lost forever once they are exploited, but the value of what every place we inhabit teaches us about ourselves and the natural world we’re a part of. The Carter Center’s global health initiatives have always been strong on local initiative and engagement.
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were the best type of Americans—principled, practical, and modest. I always admired that they fished with flies and not with bait—and that they liked to work with their hands. They worked for sanity, democracy, and a living planet—something we all need to do, now and in the days ahead.