Over at reddit, I saw this link about the story behind the solar panels that Carter put on the roof of the white house. [ the lead comment by the reddit reader was : "To every person, especially Republicans, who made fun of President Jimmy Carter for installing solar panels on the roof of the White House to raise awareness of our dependency on oil...Fuck, You. "]
http://www.boston.com/...
Now, a documentary film has been made about the panels, using them as a backdrop to explore American oil dependency and the political lack of will to pursue alternative energy. Swiss directors Christina Hemaner and Roman Keller follow the route of the panels in the hour-long film "A Road Not Taken."
having once dabbled in the vegetable-oil conversion process for a diesel vehicle, and currently a user of micro-solar-technology (in the form of a mag lens used for smoking), this story piqued my interest. Currently, I do not own an automobile..(bicycle!)
It's really cool that this story was not only unearthed, but documented into a movie.
If Fate were to somehow spare americans (and the world) from doom, despite our nation's collective insistence on expediting the apocalypse, despite the lessons we should have learned about oil in the 70's.....well, then Fate would be much kinder than I can imagine. (my outlook for the american economy...energy policy...general well-being= pretty fucking awful)
back to the story:
You may not remember this but in 1979, President Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the roof of the White House West Wing.
The panels, which were used to heat water for the staff eating area, were a symbol of a new solar strategy that Carter said was going to "move our nation toward true energy security and abundant, readily available energy supplies."
But in 1986, President Ronald Reagan took the solar panels down when the White House roof was being repaired. They were never reinstalled.
In 1990, the panels were retrieved from government storage and brought to the environmentally-minded Unity College about an hour southeast of Bangor, Maine. There, with help from Academy Award winning actress Glenn Close, the panels were refurbished and used to heat water in the cafeteria until 2005. They are still there, although they don't work anymore.
Whether it's killing the electric car, or ignoring mass transit, or waiting decades to increase fuel-economy standards, American energy policy has been suicidal/addictive. If oil were coke or heroin, the usa would be its Keith Richards....we are somehow alive, though not remotely healthy.