Thank you, Jimmy Carter, RIP 1924-2024
While I do not have a photo of me with the former President, I do have photos that are direct results of one of his acts, the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), which created the Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. With that, I could experience and enjoy being in the presence of coastal brown bears in their own preserved habitat.
I am grateful for the foresight and intellectual curiosity about carbon dioxide emissions into our atmosphere that lead him to commission the Global 2000 Report to the President, published just before he left office, where limiting global warming to 2°C above preindustrial levels was proposed, and ultimately adopted 38 years later in the Paris Climate Accord. The world wasn’t ready then to acknowledge and accept the consequences, and perhaps still isn’t to a degree. We will pay that price.
I was much too young at the time to recognize and appreciate these and many other environmental contributions to his legacy as they were taking place. He continued to set an example that many other leaders, past and present, will never live up to. His successors tried, and continue to try, to undo and muddy those contributions. Let this be just one other small thank you amongst so many who recognize your tremendous impact on this nation and this planet.
And I am pretty sure the bears are grateful, too.
Here’s to Carters’s memory. LI voted for him!
Thank you, Mark. I don’t recall why but Carter’s presidential election is the only one I’ve missed voting in. 🙁
Well, that I was eligible for 🙂 Obviously, Washington, Adams, Jefferson and a few others were missed.
I certainly wasn’t eligible, and only vaguely remember reading or hearing about events of the time. I learned so much more from interviews post-presidency, especially his work on guinea worm and Habitat for Humanity. The report on climate is also not something mentioned a lot, I suspect buried by his successor.
There is a series on PBS called “In their own words” that has a bio of Carter that we enjoyed.
Carter also floated the Middle Fork of the Salmon in Idaho in ’78, which says a lot right there.
An incredible human being!
Thank you for making this post.