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15. In 1982 I went to the Knoxville World's Fair, its theme was "Energy Turns the World"

Last edited Wed Nov 15, 2023, 10:48 AM - Edit history (1)

If you think about it, it takes time to pull something like a World’s Fair together. Although Reagan was President, the direction was set when Carter was in office.

Essentially all of the technologies we are now attempting to roll out were on exhibit there. (Solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal power, heat pumps, on-demand water heaters…) Carter of course had created national research labs to work on advancing all of these technologies. As hard as it may be to believe today, what we now know as NREL (The National Renewable Energy Laboratory) grew out of the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI) established by (in my estimation) the best and most underappreciaited Republican president of my lifetime, Gerald Ford.

Jimmy Carter made it clear from the start that Energy was key to his administration. He addressed it in his first televised address to the nation.

February 2, 1977: Report to the American People on Energy

Good evening.

Tomorrow will be two weeks since I became President. I have spent a lot of time deciding how I can be a good President. This talk, which the broadcast networks have agreed to bring to you, is one of several steps that I will take to keep in close touch with the people of our country, and to let you know informally about our plans for the coming months.

…

Now, the Congress has already made many of the preparations for energy legislation. Presidential assistant Dr. James Schlesinger is beginning to direct an effort to develop a national energy policy. Many groups of Americans will be involved. On April 20, we will have completed the planning for our energy program and will immediately then ask the Congress for its help in enacting comprehensive legislation.

Our program will emphasize conservation. The amount of energy being wasted which could be saved is greater than the total energy that we are importing from foreign countries. We will also stress development of our rich coal reserves in an environmentally sound way; we will emphasize research on solar energy and other renewable energy sources; and we will maintain strict safeguards on necessary atomic energy production.

The responsibility for setting energy policy is now split among more than 50 different agencies, departments, and bureaus in the Federal Government. Later this month, I will ask the Congress for its help in combining many of these agencies in a new energy department to bring order out of chaos. Congressional leaders have already been working on this for quite a while.

We must face the fact that the energy shortage is permanent. There is no way we can solve it quickly. But if we all cooperate and make modest sacrifices, if we learn to live thriftily and remember the importance of helping our neighbors, then we can find ways to adjust and to make our society more efficient and our own lives more enjoyable and productive. Utility companies must promote conservation and not consumption. Oil and natural gas companies must be honest with all of us about their reserves and profits. We will find out the difference between real shortages and artificial ones. We will ask private companies to sacrifice, just as private citizens must do.

All of us must learn to waste less energy. Simply by keeping our thermostats, for instance, at 65 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees at night we could save half the current shortage of natural gas.

…

(The 65° advice was demonstrated by his sweater.)

Reagan (of course) cut the budgets for the research labs by as much as 90%…