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department of energy
Jimmy Carter: The First Neoliberal Democrat and the Last Boy Scout
The most meaningful measure we can make of Jimmy Carter is whether we would prefer an imperfect, yet noble man like him at the helm of the country, today. I would.
Jan 08, 2025
Virtually everybody with an opinion judges Jimmy Carter to have been a decent man. He was certainly as good an ex-president as we’ve ever had. But what about his legacy as a then-president? That assessment is murkier.
A common refrain holds that Carter was a good man but a weak president, that he was not wise to the ways of Washington, that he was naïve in his belief that pure motives could win over champions of impure schemes.
It is impossible to fairly weigh Carter’s success or failure without understanding the context in which he served. That context was some of the greatest institutional tumult the U.S. has ever seen.
First, was Vietnam. The U.S. had just limped, still bleeding, out of the Vietnam War. It was the first war America had ever lost. The trauma of that loss (to say nothing of the trauma of having tried to prevent it) cannot be overstated.
Carter was the first elected president to have to deal with the shock, the disbelief, the grief, the shame, and the anger from the loss. There wasn’t a person in America who knew how to deal with that rat’s nest of conflicting, disorienting emotions and make the country whole again.
After Vietnam (and, especially, immediately after) the U.S. was not the swaggering hegemon it had been for the 30 years since 1945. But what could it be? That Delphic divination was only the first of Carter’s monumental challenges. There was equal upheaval, economically.
In 1971, Richard Nixon had removed the dollar’s coupling to gold. That left Arab oil sheikdoms receiving paper for their once-ever patrimony. They responded by tripling the price of oil, sending both inflationary and recessionary shocks through the world’s economy.
Theory held that stagnation and inflation couldn’t exist at the same time. But there it was: stagflation. The remedy for stagnation was to lower interest rates and increase the money supply. The remedy for inflation was to raise interest rates and reduce the money supply.
Clearly, you couldn’t do both at the same time. The Keynesian framework for managing the economy, operative since the Great Depression, no longer worked. So, in 1979, Carter hired Paul Volcker to try to fix it.
Volcker jacked up interest rates to record levels, inducing an immediate recession. It was the right thing to do, but it killed Carter’s chances in the 1980 election, as he knew it would. It gave Ronald Reagan his now-famous question: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”
Finally, on top of the ferocious ferment roiling international and economic affairs, there was Watergate. Richard Nixon was caught trying to break into the offices of whistleblower Daniel Elsberg’s psychiatrist and also the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The crime seems petty today, especially compared to launching a mob on the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power, but it was monumental, then.
Probably no event in modern history had so shattered the public’s faith in the integrity of its national institutions and actors. Nixon resigned in disgrace. All political acts—and all political actors—were suddenly suspected of being nefarious and self-dealing.
Carter was both, but he was also neither. That is, yes, he was a politician, carrying out political acts. But he was neither nefarious nor self-dealing. He was as honest and selfless a politician as we’ve ever known. But, that was the tar with which all politics, and politicians, were smeared by Nixon’s sordid bequest.
Simply put, the intellectual and institutional moorings that had anchored the country for the prior 40 years—from the New Deal consensus to the post-World War II international order—were coming unglued. That was the tectonically-shifting world that Carter inherited. Nobody had ever dealt with anything like it.
So, how did he do? In truth, he did pretty well. First, the negatives.
In 1979, Iranian revolutionaries overthrew their government and took 66 Americans hostage. They held them for 444 days, dealing a severe humiliation to the U.S. That was probably Carter’s greatest public defeat.
But the underlying grievance had started in 1953, when the U.S. overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and installed the brutal Shah Reza Pahlavi, a reliable U.S. sycophant but a ruthless enemy of his own people. The boil of that festering resentment popped in 1979, on Carter’s watch.
Also, the Reagan campaign had cut a back-door deal with the revolutionaries to not release the hostages until after the election, thereby depriving Carter of a win in the matter. It was one of the most perfidious deeds ever to degrade American politics. Most people didn’t know that then, and don’t know it, still, today, so mistakenly blame Carter for the entire ordeal.
Later in 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Carter had provoked the invasion. Six months before, he had begun supplying arms to the opponents of the Soviet-leaning Afghan government. The Soviets invaded to prop up their ally which was under attack by U.S.-supported terrorists, including the later-to-become-infamous Osama bin Laden.
Ironically, Afghanistan proved to be the Soviet Union’s Vietnam, draining it of treasure, manpower, and willpower. It is widely regarded to have been the single greatest cause of the Soviet collapse, in 1991. Carter’s critics who condemn his actions at the time always seem to forget that they eventuated in the defeat of the U.S.’ greatest adversary of the twentieth century.
Carter’s solutions to economic woes leaned conservative, or even further. It was he who began the Neoliberal regime we often associate with Ronald Reagan.
He deregulated the airline, trucking, and railroad industries. He reduced spending on welfare much more than either Nixon or Reagan ever did. Fearing inflation, he fought the United Mine Workers in their 1978 national coal strike, alienating one of his—and the Democratic party’s—most important bases.
But what of the good things that Carter delivered?
For all of the upheaval, he actually delivered better economic performance than did Ronald Reagan. That meant faster GDP growth and higher levels of business investment. He delivered the last balance of payments surplus the country has ever known. And he did this without the budget busting deficits that followed him.
When Carter left office, in January, 1981, the national debt—the cumulation of all federal borrowing over 204 years—stood at just under $1 trillion. Reagan tripled that debt in only eight years, an ominous portent of things to come. It is $36 trillion, today.
Carter placed more women and minorities in the federal judiciary—40 and 87, respectively—than all of his predecessors, combined. Ruth Bader Ginsburg attributed her decision to become a judge to Carter’s initiative. He literally actualized the centuries-long-delayed intent embodied in the Civil Rights revolution of the 1960s.
Carter established the Department of Energy, an essential move, given the way the country and the world were being whipsawed by Arab oil producers. It has been a huge contributor to the U.S.’ being one of the world’s top energy producers still, today.
He started the Department of Education. An educated work force is probably the most valuable social asset a society can produce. But before Carter, it was left to the scattered machinations of 50 different state bureaucracies, a guarantee for national failure.
Carter engineered the Camp David Accords, bringing Israel and Egypt together to bury at least part of the hostility that has afflicted the Middle East since Israel’s founding in 1948. He proved prescient on the Israelis, predicting that they would not honor their promises to cede greater autonomy to the Palestinians.
Finally, Carter introduced Human Rights into U.S. foreign policy considerations. Even if done badly, it signaled an aspiration for what the U.S. stood for in its desire to be “the leader of the free world.”
The sum of this amounts to as adroit (though not flawless) an adaptation to the challenges of the time as could be conceived.
Besides considering the context and weighing the balance on Carter, there is one more lens through which we can, and should, judge him. That is, “Who would you rather have at the helm, today, steering the country through waters that are at least as perilous as those Carter faced?”
The U.S. is going through similar—or even greater—dislocations, today, as it was in Carter’s time. Its status in the world is plummeting as it has done everything it possibly could to bolster Israel’s heinous genocide of the Palestinians, and as China has blown by it in manufacturing, commerce, and in many areas of technology.
It has suffered withering military defeats, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and, now, Ukraine. The majority of the world’s nations—led by Russia and China—are aligning against it as a Global South. Its economy, too, is much worse today than it was in Carter’s time.
In 1980, the U.S. had not begun hollowing out its economy with 40 years of de-industrialization. It had not begun the psychotic debt binge it has taken, borrowing $35 trillion dollars to try to mask the rot and keep the lights on. It was not hazarding the onset of actuarial bankruptcy, as it is, today.
These are not the signifiers of a healthy global leader. They are the signs of a wounded, faltering behemoth struggling to find a way to regain its once-heralded, even respected, primacy.
So, where does all of this leave us with Jimmy Carter?
Everybody agrees that Carter was an honest, decent, dignified, intelligent, hard-working, selfless public servant who never used his office for personal gain. It’s the things he wasn’t, though, that makes the things he was stand out in such dazzling, admirable, relief.
He wasn’t a pathological liar. He wasn’t a serial sexual abuser. He didn’t consort with porn stars and Playboy bunnies. In fact, he was married to the same woman for 77 years. His daddy didn’t leave him $413 million, so he wasn’t a phony put-up as a self-made man. He wasn’t a five-time draft dodger. He was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis and served seven honorable years in active duty.
He wasn’t a tax cheat or a convicted felon—probably didn’t even have traffic tickets, he was such a Boy Scout. He didn’t use his office to boost his own personal wealth. He didn’t sell access to billionaires. He didn’t foment racial hatred for electoral gain. He wasn’t a bully. He didn’t threaten to send journalists and political foes to jail, in order to silence them. He didn’t steal state secrets on his way out of the presidency. And he certainly never tried to overthrow the government to keep himself in power.
It’s amazing how far our putative standards have fallen, and how we can so readily, fatuously, condemn a good man who, facing the greatest task of many decades, gave our country his very best, and, in fact, healed so many of the wounds of distrust and division that he and we had inherited.
Smug, supercilious condescension about Jimmy Carter is precisely the sign of our own inadequacy to judge him. We insist of him, even in his death, that he be some kind of incongruous super-human avatar: both chaste and worldly-wise; honest and wily; simple, but savvy; idealistic, yet pragmatic; compassionate, yet ruthless.
Would that we could apply such standards in our own time, to wildly, egregiously inferior human beings, repulsive, amoral self-dealers, setting out to loot the country for their own vanity and personal gain, again.
The most meaningful measure we can make of Jimmy Carter is whether we would prefer an imperfect, yet noble man like him at the helm of the country, today. I would. You? There you go.
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Biden Admin Confirms Dangers of LNG Exports But Won't Act to Block Them
"This study mirrors the Biden administration's entire four-year approach to advancing a clean energy future: weak and half-hearted," one advocate said.
Dec 17, 2024
Approving more liquefied natural gas exports would raise domestic energy prices, increase the pollution burden placed on local communities, and exacerbate the climate crisis, the Biden administration concluded in a long-awaited report released Tuesday.
However, the Department of Energy (DOE) stopped short of denying any pending or future approvals, passing the buck to the administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has vocally supported the LNG boom.
"This study mirrors the Biden administration's entire four-year approach to advancing a clean energy future: weak and half-hearted," Food & Water Watch policy director Jim Walsh said in a statement. "Liquid natural gas exports systematically poison the most vulnerable frontline communities, pollute our air and water, and drive up domestic energy prices. We cannot continue to be victimized by the profit-driven agenda of fossil fuel corporations. President Biden must listen to the warnings of his own government by banning further LNG exports and rejecting pending LNG permits before he leaves office."
"DOE's long-awaited environmental and economic analyses demonstrate what environmental justice and frontline communities have been saying for years—liquefied natural gas export facilities are not in the public interest."
U.S. LNG exports have tripled in the last five years, making the country the leading gas exporter in the world. At the same time, the latest climate research has shown that—due to methane leaks across the LNG life cycle—the so-called "bridge fuel" is in fact worse for the climate than coal.
Following pressure from climate and environmental justice advocates, the Biden administration in January announced a pause on approving LNG exports to non-Free Trade Agreement countries while the DOE updated the studies it uses to determine whether or not gas exports are in the public interest, as Congress has authorized it to do under the Natural Gas Act.
Those updated studies were released Tuesday, along with a statement from Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. Climate, consumer, and frontline advocates welcomed the findings themselves, which they said were largely consistent with their warnings and experience.
"DOE's long-awaited environmental and economic analyses demonstrate what environmental justice and frontline communities have been saying for years—liquefied natural gas export facilities are not in the public interest," Leslie Fields, the chief federal officer at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, said in a statement. "Not only do these projects compound public health and safety harms to communities, especially in the Gulf and for communities of color, but they also exacerbate the climate crisis and raise energy prices here at home."
Jamie Henn, the director of Fossil Free Media, said on social media that Granholm's statement was "even stronger than I expected."
In it, Granholm emphasized five key findings from the updated studies:
- LNG exports are booming, with the quantities already approved being sufficient to meet global demand for decades in 4 out of 5 scenarios.
- Increasing exports would boost the profits of export facility owners and generate jobs in the industry, but would raise gas prices for domestic industry and consumers overall. Within the U.S., "unfettered exports" would raise prices by more than 30% and add "well over" $100 to the average yearly household energy bill by 2050.
- LNG export facilities are concentrated in communities already exposed to fossil fuel industry pollution, with methane, volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, and other contaminates raising mortality rates.
- Increased LNG exports would contribute to the climate crisis: They are more likely to supplant renewables than coal and add to global emissions in every scenario the DOE examined.
- Regulators should consider where LNG exports will be shipped. Demand in Europe is falling, while China is currently the leading importer and projected to remain so through 2050.
"Today's study makes clear that all pending export applications must be denied as being inconsistent with the public interest, and should result in a reassessment of existing exports to determine compatibility with the public interest," Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program, said in a statement. "Using LNG exports to provide energy abundance for China at the expense of higher utility bills for working Americans is not in the public interest."
Granholm stated clearly that "the effect of increased energy prices for domestic consumers combined with the negative impacts to local communities and the climate will continue to grow as exports increase."
Yet she also said the Biden administration would not act on the findings of the updated studies due to the timing of their release: The report's publication now triggers a 60-day comment period, and the inauguration is only a little more than a month away.
"Given that the comment period for the study will continue into the next administration—and that there are a limited number of applications that are concurrently ready for the DOE 'public interest' review—decisions about the future of LNG export levels will necessarily be made by future administrations," she said. "Our hope is that we can now assess the future of natural gas exports based on the facts and ensure authorizations are reviewed in a manner that truly advances the public interest of all the American people."
While the purpose of the DOE's updated studies had never been to deny or approve exports—rather to inform those decisions—advocates have been pushing the Biden administration to act on its findings. In particular, frontline Gulf groups are concerned about Calcasieu Pass 2 and Commonwealth LNG, two pending export facilities that are currently subject to supplemental environmental impact statements by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission due to concerns about their local impacts.
"We were hoping that this study would be released and with this study would come the denial of permits for these projects," frontline leader Roishetta Ozane of the Vessel Project of Louisiana said in a press briefing.
"It'll be hard for the Trump administration to completely ignore the finding that exports drive up costs for consumers. That's political dynamite."
Several groups responded to the study with renewed calls for permit denials.
"This study confirms that Donald Trump's plans to supercharge LNG exports will come at the expense of consumers and the climate," said Friends of the Earth senior energy campaigner Raena Garcia. "We cannot afford to prop up an industry that continues to threaten our people and the planet for profit. Over the next few weeks, it is not too late for the Biden administration to curb the deadly LNG export boom."
Walsh of Food & Water Watch said: "Secretary Granholm's admission that continuing LNG exports will drive up costs and harm vulnerable communities is a sad reflection on what we have been saying for the last decade. It is time for this administration to start matching its rhetoric with action, and reject new LNG exports while it still can."
But Henn told Common Dreams that this might be a losing battle.
"The administration has indicated it wants to follow the regular process and not jump ahead and deny permits before they leave office, only to have Trump reapprove them," Henn said. "We disagree and think denials would send a strong political signal and potentially strengthen legal challenges. It's unlikely we'll sway them with so little time left, but we're going to try."
Still, campaigners emphasized that the DOE's findings will strengthen the case of any community or group opposing LNG exports going forward.
"This report will serve as a tool for us in fighting against these projects," Ozane said.
This remains the case despite the Trump administration's pro-fossil fuel stance and history of running roughshod over rules and regulations.
"Trump will of course try and ignore the study, but it gives us new political, legal, and diplomatic arguments," Henn told Common Dreams. "Politically, it'll be hard for the Trump administration to completely ignore the finding that exports drive up costs for consumers. That's political dynamite. Legally, if Trump just ignores the findings of this report and rushes approval, that opens the door for challenges."
Natural Resources Defense Council senior attorney Gillian Giannetti pointed out in a press briefing that "because these studies are in the public record, the failure to properly consider them and their relevance would be unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act."
Slocum of Public Citizen said that groups like his have legal intervention status and can ask a court to review any Trump decision.
"Any court is going to want to know—what does the administrative record say?" he noted. "And this report greatly strengthens the case that requested LNG exports are not consistent with the public interest. So a court can toss out a Trump admin approval."
"These studies show clearly that LNG exports are in gas executives' best interest and nobody else's."
Henn added that the findings could slow the LNG buildout both diplomatically and economically.
"Diplomatically, the climate data in this report makes it less likely that our allies, all of whom have signed the Paris agreement, will be as interested in importing dirty U.S. gas," he told Common Dreams.
"Finally," he concluded, "this report will cause tremors on Wall Street. This report and Secretary Granholm's strongly worded letter indicate that future Democratic administrations won't likely support new export facilities. Since these are long-term investment decisions, that uncertainty will slow down financing for new projects."
The report also undermines Trump's economic argument that more fossil fuel production is better for everyone, revealing it instead for another giveaway to the wealthy.
"Despite claims from the incoming Trump administration that it wants to lower prices, the truth is they are putting billionaire fossil fuel donors ahead of everyday Americans," Greenpeace USA deputy climate program director John Noël said in a statement. "The record is crystal clear: Increasing LNG exports will drive up costs for domestic businesses and consumers. Full stop. Any further investment in LNG will only exacerbate the cost-of-living crisis, while enriching gas industry CEOs who don't have to experience the fallout of living near an export terminal."
Lauren Parker, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute, agreed, saying, "These studies show clearly that LNG exports are in gas executives' best interest and nobody else's."
Parker concluded, "If Trump wants to drive up dangerous gas exports, he's going to have to answer for causing more deadly storms, condemning the Rice's whale to extinction, and socking consumers with higher costs."
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The DOE Finally Admits That LNG Isn’t a Get-Out-of-Climate-Crisis Free Card
A new report and statement won’t necessarily bind anything, but they do something almost as important: Finally a Democratic administration has been straightforward and honest about natural gas.
Dec 17, 2024
Late Monday afternoonPolitico, and then The New York Times, reported that the Department of Energy is ready to release the report of it’s nearly year-long study on LNG exports—a study mandated by a large-scale campaign (that very much included this newsletter) which persuaded U.S. President Joe Biden to halt new permits for new terminals along the Gulf of Mexico.
The report, and the equally important statement that came with it, won’t necessarily bind anything—it may complicate somewhat the Trump administration’s plans to approve new export terminals, but probably not fatally. But it does something almost as important. Finally a Democratic administration has been straightforward and honest about natural gas. That may actually matter, both in the short and long-term.
The continued growth of gas exports was “neither sustainable nor advisable,” Granholm said.
The background here is that, ever since the onset of fracking in the ‘oughts, Democrats have embraced the surge in natural gas. The GOP was still in love with coal, but climate change concerns were making that uncomfortable for anyone this side of Joe Manchin (D-Flammable Black Rocks). Along came the sudden surge in natural gas, which allowed the Obama administration both a path toward reviving the post-financial-crisis economy, and a way to cut carbon emissions. If you doubt me, read almost any of former President Barack Obama’s State of the Union addresses, which each contain a paragraph-long paean to the fracking boom.
In 2013, for instance, he enthused:
We produce more natural gas than ever before—and nearly everyone’s energy bill is lower because of it. And over the last four years, our emissions of the dangerous carbon pollution that threatens our planet have actually fallen…
The natural gas boom has led to cleaner power and greater energy independence. We need to encourage that. And that’s why my administration will keep cutting red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits.
The shift from coal to gas-fired power plants, which was basically the sum of Obama’s climate policy, dropped carbon emissions, something he (and the fossil fuel industry) boasted about endlessly. But the problem was physics: As Cornell professor Bob Howarth started noisily pointing out, carbon dioxide isn’t the only greenhouse gas. CH4, or methane, traps heat even more effectively, and Howarth and others insisted it was escaping into the atmosphere from fracking fields and pipelines in large enough quantity to cancel out the progress on carbon.
They won the scientific battle—study after study has now demonstrated that indeed leak rates are very high. But the political struggle was much harder: No one wanted to give up the idea that there was a pain-free way out of the climate dilemma.
There was so much natural gas in the Permian Basin that America couldn’t soak it up, and in the Trump years we started to export it—that quickly grew to the point where America was the largest source of gas in the world. Both the Biden and Trump administrations approved one export terminal after another, over the outcry of local residents along the Louisiana and Texas coasts who had to deal with these monstrosities. It finally reached the point where environmentalists had to make a stand, and that’s what happened in the fall of 2023—after another Howarth study, this one demonstrating that so much methane leaked from the giant LNG carriers that it was worse than exporting coal.
Hence the pause, and hence the angry outcry from the oil industry (which worked harder than ever to elect a Republican in November), and hence today’s report. The language is truly strong: Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, in her letter that accompanies the report, stresses that it would be bad news for American consumers who still depend on gas (supply and demand being what it is). But the more important part is what she says about natural gas and climate. According to the Times, she says that any few facilities should face “rigorous question”
“especially in a world that needs to quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” Under a scenario in which more than the current level of gas exports was approved, the report finds that the additional emissions would be 1.5 gigatons per year by 2050. That’s about a quarter of annual emissions generated by the United States, the world’s second-biggest polluter.
The fossil fuel industry always insists that LNG exports will replace coal, but crucially Granholm and the report made clear that’s not true.
She noted that the study found increased LNG exports would displace more wind, solar, and other renewable energy than coal. The study modeled five scenarios, and in every one, global greenhouse gases were projected to rise, even when researchers assumed aggressive use of technologies to capture and store carbon emissions.
This, in turn, sends a signal to Malaysia and Vietnam and the other Asian countries that would be the main recipients of gas from new terminals. I am guardedly hopeful that the year’s delay—which allowed solar and windpower to drop in price and gain in momentum—may be enough to convince those nations that they don’t want to sign up for 40 years of dependency on imported gas. I sure hope so, in part because of the heroes that led this fight—people like Roishetta Ozane who are defending not just the whole planet but their particular part of it.
The continued growth of gas exports was “neither sustainable nor advisable,” Granholm said. That’s the closest that prominent American politicians have come to telling the truth about the most important component of the climate crisis. If Vice President Kamala Harris had won the election, this might have meant a real sea change. In our current reality it’s at least honest, and honesty is a lot better than its opposite.
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