President Jimmy Carter speaks against a backdrop of solar panels at the White House on 21 June 1979 in Washington. The ex-president was a pioneer on renewable energy and land conservation but his 1980 defeat was a ‘fork in the road’ When a group of dignitaries and journalists made a rare foray to the roof of the White House, Jimmy Carter had something to show them: 32 solar water-heating panels . “A generation from now,” the US president declared, “this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.” What happened next is the stuff of tragic what-ifs and what-might-have-beens. “ It did become a curiosity, it is a museum piece and it certainly is an example of a road not taken,” said Alice Hill, a senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations thinktank in Washington. “He was prescient that we were at the fork in the road. And we didn’t take that road. ” A few months after that solar panel unveiling in June 1979, Carter, who died last Sunday aged 100, lost his bid for re-election in a landslide, in part because of a major energy crisis and soaring oil and gas prices. He was long seen as a one-term failure. But subsequent reappraisals have suggested that his environmental legacy , including pioneering efforts in land conservation and renewable energy, reveals a man ahead of his time. Soon after taking office in the winter of 1977, Carter delivered a fireside address entreating the public to drop their thermostats in an effort to reduce the need for fossil fuels. “Without public […]