Coast Lines
Jimmy Crater's Environmental Legacy, Endangered.
Jimmy Carter’s Environmental Legacy;
Endangered
While it was Richard Nixon who established the legal and institutional environmental framework that we use today, including the EPA the Clean Air and Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, his heart was never into it.
His actions were done because of pressure from the Seventies Environmental Movement and the fact that he needed political capital to continue funding the war in Vietnam.
But it was peanut farmer and forward-thinking nuclear engineer Jimmy Carter who as a boy had a pet alligator, often visited the famed Okefenokee Swamp and could name every bird in the trees of his native Plains, Georgia.
It was President Carter who urged Americans to turn down their thermostats, who put solar panels on the White House and signed legislation protecting over 100 million acres in Alaska and solidified those gains by creating the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge.
He fought hard to kill 39 federal water projects and recognized the threats to America’s rivers which are now being parched by a climate-changed-fueled megadrought.
More environmental gains came under horse lover Reagan, Alabaman Bill Clinton, Urbane Obama, oilman George Bush and beach lover Joe Biden.
But now, all those hard-fought gains could be swept away by failed businessman and gung-ho hotel developer, Donald Trump.
All while our planet continues to heat up, the sea levels rise, storms become more powerful and our coasts crumble into the ocean without adequate protections.