This article briefly touches on an interesting fact, which is despite popular opinion, George W. Bush is a not-quite-closeted environmentalist who loaded his personal home with alternative energy sources like solar, a geothermal heat pump (which are not cheap to install), and rainwater collection.
The biggest impact a former (or current) president can have is to use their position to influence the current debate.
It's great that GW Bush has an efficient electric home, but he's hardly used his voice and platform to speak out in support of renewable and zero carbon energy sources and fighting climate change.
If he had done so, perhaps a significant percentage of the population wouldn't perceive reducing use fossil fuels as a threatening identity politics issue, and rather as something that is better in the long run for their pocketbooks and the environment.
This may have something to do with his being a former oil executive, governor, and prominent resident of Texas, a major fossil fuel producing state, and therefore not having an interest in promoting anything that would challenge the bread and butter industry of his state and many other fossil fuel based economies around the world.
It's never too late for him to start speaking up against fossil fuels, though! It would be a great service to his country and the world if he did.
It's way too late for that. When Al Gore, as involved as he was with An Inconvenient Truth, was the alternative to Bush and given how little Bush did for preparing the country for climate change, the damage is done. Bush will be condemned in history as having failed to address climate change in any meaningful capacity.
Climate change yes, but climate change is a bipartisan issue, despite what corrupt politicians and media corporations would have you think. The majority of all voters want more action on climate change. It is presented as a partisan issue to give politicians an excuse for their inaction on behalf of their owners, while laying the blame on the common people -- privatize profit and socialize responsibility, as usual.
Now what would be great is if he had proactively spoken out against war, coups, etc., and admitted he was wrong and those wars were failures. Who knows, he may even have got a few people across the aisle to reconsider their pro intervention stance and prevented much horror and tragedy and further destruction of the west's moral standing caused by subsequent administrations.
Although I guess he's just as deep in it with the war industry too.
> Climate change yes, but climate change is a bipartisan issue, despite what corrupt politicians and media corporations would have you think.
If this were the case, most Republican politicians would be running on a carbon emissions reduction platform, but that's manifestly not the case. The vast majority are either silent on the issue or openly mock the idea of its existence.
The only other explanation is that there is a tacit understanding between them and their voters that they privately take climate change seriously but just don't want to discuss it openly, which is an extremely far fetched explanation.
It's not impossible for conservatives to take climate change seriously and confront it openly - look at the current UK government for example. Likewise, it's not a given that a far-left leader takes climate change seriously - look at Venezuela. It matters where the bread is buttered.
> Now what would be great is if he had proactively spoken out against war, coups, etc., and admitted he was wrong and those wars were failures
Agreed, but as the Ukraine war has again shown us, fossil fuels are the glue that binds climate change and wars of aggression, so I'm not so sure that we can separate the two so easily.
Republicans are happy to reduce emissions as long as the energy is not more expensive, while Democrats are willing to allows prices to rise to accomplish that goal.
This has second order effects: Republicans will say if your new energy source is cheaper, people will automatically use it, no need for government to do anything. While Democrats want the government to mandate it, because that's the only way it will work if it's more expensive.
You might also consider if I've reversed 1st order and 2nd order here, that's up to you to decide.
> Republicans are happy to reduce emissions as long as the energy is not more expensive, while Democrats are willing to allows prices to rise to accomplish that goal.
Fossil fuels are only less expensive when you ignore the real health and climate change costs, which is precisely what politicians aligned with fossil fuel interests do on both sides of the political aisle.
Near as I can tell, at least right now the real health and climate costs are hard to quantity and very diffuse across a huge number of people. Also prone to exaggeration or undercounting.
Price at the pump/wellhead is easy, and impossible to ignore.
This comparison completely ignores a glaring counterpoint: corn.
It's not the Democrats shoving through corn subsidies, then cramming ethanol requirements into the system. It's not Republicans either. It's universally bipartisan, despite ethanol being a terrible fuel source.
As someone who has changed or disassembled and cleaned many a carb from crappy ethanol-polluted gasoline, I’m not pro-ethanol, but I think there’s a slice of science in favor of it on lifecycle emissions basis.
> If this were the case, most Republican politicians would be running on a carbon emissions reduction platform, but that's manifestly not the case. The vast majority are either silent on the issue or openly mock the idea of its existence.
It is the case. Look at the numbers, the data doesn't lie. I'm not talking about corrupt politicians, I'm talking about the people. Look up the numbers. Far worse policies, laws, wars, etc have been rammed through on negative popularity. Far slimmer margins are hailed as a "mandate" and "bipartisan" when it suits them.
It's not the people who need convincing at this point, it's the politicians. What the people need convincing of is something else, which is that it's now up to the politicians. They are the ones responsible, not some lunatic fringe or imaginary boogyman they've invented. Politicians. All politicians, and especially their politicians.
Don't let them keep fooling you into believing it's the unemployed coal miner in West Virginia who is to blame for them not taking action on climate change. It's the politicians. Both sides -- what are the Democrats doing about it right now that they control the executive and congress and have a decent position in the senate? The gravest and most important problem ever to have faced humanity. Must be that all-powerful hillbilly somehow stopping them from doing anything about it, eh?
Not only are the vast majority of Americans in favor of more climate action, actually the majority of Republican voters are in favor of significant policies. 55% in favor of taxing corporations based on their carbon emissions!!
So please stop spreading misinformation about this and don't let your corrupt politicians continue to fool you, continue to divide people, and continue to get away with their inaction on climate change. It's not some lunatic fringe of hated "others" who are preventing action, it's your damn lying, divisive, hatemongering, corrupt politicians.
> It's not the people who need convincing at this point, it's the politicians.
I don’t think it’s that simple. “The people” want action on climate change, but they also want to get better of, or at least not get worse of. They want to keep their big cars, holidays far away, cheap electronics, they want to keep eating lots of meat, etc.
Nobody can give them all they want, so I don’t think it’s fair to blame the politicians for that.
It's exactly that simple. Stop making excuses for your terrible corrupt lying politicians. People didn't want to spend trillions of dollars on war, yet the politicians somehow made it happen. And they can't enact popular measures for what they tell you they consider to be the greatest problem ever faced by humanity? Get out of here.
When polled abstractly, a majority of people are in favor of fixing climate change. When asked if they’d personally cut back on beef, private car usage, HVAC, house size, and flyaway vacations, support is considerably lower.
When polled abstractly if people support spending trillions of dollars on war they don't. When asked if they would personally spend $6000 for every man woman and child in their house and send their son to die for just one war (of many), they also don't.
Yet decades worth of corrupt politicians on both sides have gleefully supported these criminal wars.
Again, how are they so unable to do anything when it comes to what they allege is the biggest problem ever to face humanity?
And a carbon tax on corporations which has bipartisan supprot does not mean everybody suddenly has to noticeably cut back on all those things. That sounds like the kind of fear mongering lying-by-polling that these crooked politicians love to use to shift the blame from themselves on to the people who in fact do want change.
The original Build Back Better was a cornucopia of climate policies (mostly clean energy tax credits) that was neutered to please Manchin and then he refused to support it anyways.
Biden also used the EPA's authority on pollution to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants. However, the courts have stalled this and the stacked Supreme Court will likely nix it.
The third major plank is the regulations on vehicles (50% of vehicles EV by 2030 and much more). That's still being drawn up, but Biden's union base is stalling it internally.
IOW, Biden was trying and failed. Since the war on Ukraine he's given up, or at least has tabled it.
No, they really haven't been doing much at all. They've been pretending to try and pretending to fail, then blaming "the evil rednecks". Unfortunately their base falls for it hook line and sinker.
If republican voters think other issues are more important that their representative's opinion on climate change, then there is no need for the politician to reflect the popular opinion. You only have two parties in the US. If one party does something you absolutely can not stand whatever the other guys say is not very important.
Do you suggest he should follow the example of more recent politicians and use his bully pulpit to tell the general population to go buy a $50k electric car, when many working families live paycheck to paycheck, and are now having to decide between whether to put food on the table or fuel in their tank?
It never appeared to be the man's style; he pretty much went underground after leaving office from what I remember. Environmentalism is expensive. It requires considerable capital investment and most individuals just don't have the means. Even with tax breaks and incentives, these things are still out of reach for much of the working class. Politicians are patronizing people who can't afford a new ICE vehicle, let alone an EV.
> Do you suggest he should follow the example of more recent politicians and use his bully pulpit to tell the general population to go buy a $50k electric car
He should have punched up and told the auto industry to produce more efficient ICE cars and EVs to help regular Americans save money on gas. Instead, he weakened the CAFE standard [1].
And he should have advocated for more tax credits for lower income people to buy more efficient vehicles (paid for by higher taxes on high income people).
CAFE is such a shitty law that the best thing you could do would be taking it behind the barn and shooting it. Rather than set a floor, it sets a ceiling. The artificial divide on fleets by where they are produced privileges UAW members over fuel economy and consumers. The class distinction ended moderately economical wagons for monster SUVs. And on and on and on.
Kill it, sign a safety standards harmonization agreement with the EU and Japan, and ruthlessly prioritize making it possible for American consumers to buy the same models available in other markets where fuel economy is serious business.
CAFE might be overcomplicated, but it isn't like GW Bush or others in his party (or members of Congress from Michigan of either party) were proposing alternative laws like you suggest.
Their goal was and to weaken whatever efficiency requirements there are, full stop.
Even the Biden administration has taken a pretty gentle regulatory hand with the auto and fossil fuel industries considering their own goals on climate change, for presumably electoral reasons.
Good boots are too expensive, liberal elites should stop trying to subsidize them. The poor are much happier paying more money in the long term constantly replacing "cheap" gas that they burn.
Its ironic that the OP is praising Bush for doing things that are almost certainly saving money and paying back his investment right now, while the poor people continue to buy gas long after the initial investment would have been repaid.
At least the stuff GW installed at the Whitehouse is actually helping towards a leaner, more efficient, smaller government, which people claim to be for unless it involves burning less fossil fuels.
> At least the stuff GW installed at the Whitehouse is actually helping towards a leaner, more efficient, smaller government, which people claim to be for unless it involves burning less fossil fuels.
> Although Carter’s used solar panels have been dispersed throughout the world, solar panels returned to the White House grounds under President George W. Bush.
> In 2003, Bush quietly installed a 9 kW solar system on the grounds maintenance building. He also installed two solar thermal systems to supply electricity to the White House, one to heat the spa and one to heat the pool.
(I assume "electricity" is a typo in the last sentence and they just help to heat the water, but not sure).
The poster here then praises him for doing similar on his own property because doing the sensible and cheapest thing is an act of political bravery apparently.
He is still relatively popular with Republicans, who are famously skeptical of climate change and dismissive of green energy. If he was really an environmentalist he would be making some effort to reach out and persuade them to take these subjects seriously. That is table stakes - being the voice of reason would cost him absolutely nothing and could open the door for more people within the American right to come out in favour of green policies
> ... and are now having to decide between whether to put food on the table or fuel in their tank?
And if either side cared about this then they'd be advancing policies to improve public transport so Americans weren't so car-dependent, or doing any number of things to ease the pressure on lower-income households' budgets (increase minimum wage, make healthcare free, tackle the student debt crisis or introduce paid parental leave for starters)
I was gonna say, when it comes to putting your money where your mouth is on this topic, I know far more conservatives because they're self-proclaimed preppers. It goes to the desire to be self-sufficient. When it comes to affordable, off-grid power sources, most go solar.
> Heat pumps are only expensive to install because the installers know that can get away with it.
> It's basically the same skills needed to install and air-conditioner.
Uh you're thinking of a conventional air-source heat pump, which is just an A/C run in reverse to generate heat. A geothermal heat pump, which is being discussed here, has much higher efficiencies by taking advantage of ground temperature being relatively constant and burying pipework deep in the soil (sometimes a few hundred feet deep) and circulating the heat-transfer fluid through it.
A geothermal heat pump, including installation, can range from $12,000 to $45,000 [1]
Alas from a policy standpoint, Bush's two terms occurred in likely the most crucial window for averting global warming, and the policy was not up to snuff. Admittedly so were the Clinton years, and he didn't exactly change the course aside from the usual Democrat "words not action" on environmentalism.
Plus alt energy is a great tech for the libertarian/offgrid people. It doesn't necessarily mean they're all gung-ho on green tech at a policy level.
Schwartzenegger was basically the only GOP politician that was a vocal environmentalist while he was in office, and it wasn't just to appease the California voting base, he probably limited his political career by advocating strongly for global warming policies.
> Schwartzenegger was basically the only GOP politician that was a vocal environmentalist while he was in office, and it wasn't just to appease the California voting base, he probably limited his political career by advocating strongly for global warming policies.
Randy Hunt (R), who was believed to be who would have taken Senator Warren's (D) Senate seat if she was VP, was also quite the environmentalist.
When I watched him debate a democratic contender for his seat in the MA house of reps, he was much more knowledgeable about how to combat climate change. The democrat just wanted to throw solar panels everywhere, but Hunt was working with MIT to develop storage technologies for renewable energy.
>he probably limited his political career by advocating strongly for global warming policies.
Arnie was governor of a state. Where else could he go after that? He doesn't really come off as Congress/Senate type? He's not eligible for el presidente, so Sacramento was as high as he was going to go.
I believe there are washloads of money and influence in the party that aren't office-affiliated, but from a public career standpoint, you're right. It's more of an influence within the party standpoint.
There was chatter about amending the constitution early in his governorship so that he could be president, but that disappeared, I think for the reasons I speculated...
I think its fair to say his having a child with his maid, and his demonstrated capacity to lie to his wife for years about it while living a double life... kind of damaged his voter appeal much more than his environmentalism.
Carter was probably exactly on track for when we needed to start taking it seriously if we wanted to avoid significant warming entirely, given how long even relatively fast action on these kinds of things usually takes, and considering energy use and sources are a lot harder to change quickly without major economic harm than something like reducing use of chlorofluorocarbons or lead.
Instead, we waited until we were well into "well it's already gonna be bad, but we can maybe keep it from being even worse" territory before we even sorta started caring, on a policy and governance level.
People give Nixon a lot of shit, and rightly so, but it was his time when the most significant effort (perhaps on the planet) was out forth to address environmental issues. Some of it might have been honest, a lot was likely political; he's quoted as saying “All politics is a fad. Your fad is going right now. Get what you can, and here’s what I can get you” when talking about it [0]. The source linked for that quote is actually a really fascinating and reasonably apolitical read.
One might wonder how different things would be if it took until Carter or later.
I'd have to do some thinking/reading to be sure, but I wouldn't rule out that he'd (barely) make my list of top-5 post-war US Presidents. And I'm not even a Republican, at all.
That despite being an actual crook with, to put it mildly, questionable mental health. Which really says something about the quality of the rest.
> Schwartzenegger was basically the only GOP politician that was a vocal environmentalist while he was in office, and it wasn't just to appease the California voting base, he probably limited his political career by advocating strongly for global warming policies.
As compared to all of the Republicans who didn't take climate change seriously who have done as well or better in California politics concurrently with or after Schwarzenegger’s term?
Haven't most Republicans who don't take climate change very seriously done pretty well in deep-red districts in California? People like Rep. McCarthy and former Rep. Nunes have/had a very secure hold on their districts. Schwarzenegger definitely was bucking his party trend on that issue.
> Haven't most Republicans who don't take climate change very seriously done pretty well in deep-red districts in California?
Deep-red districts are not statewide office. The last two Republicans to be elected to statewide office in California were Schwarzenegger (Governor) and Steve Poizner (Insurance Commissioner), both reelected in 2006.
Suggesting that Schwarzenegger’s positions weren’t important to appeal to CA voters and limited his political prospects is...not necessarily absolutely inconsistent with the evidence (given the small data set and potential confounding factors), but definitely also not supported by it.
Schwarzenegger definitely got a lot of centrist Democratic leaning voters in CA with his pro-environment stances, so I'd agree that it helped him politically in CA. His initial election was sort of a fluke anyways created by the nutty CA recall process, but he did stay in office for 8 years. He was really a different sort of politician than standard pro-fossil fuel Republicans, and perceived by different standards by voters across the electorate.
I always joked that Republican presidencies would induce recessions that were far more of a positive environmental effect at the macro level than Democratic false advocacy. Nobody in the liberal circles every found that funny.
Obama's solar investments seemed to spur action globally, I'm not sure any of the government loans actually produced viable domestic solar, but it probably got the Chinese gung-ho on dominating the sector.
So the Chinese government between pushing/subsidizing batteries+EV production and solar production may get the real environmental awards. I hear they are also doing the only real investment in MSR/LFTR/nuclear, so if that pans out then that's another feather in their cap.
Reflecting the practical ignorance of environmentalism by both parties, I always called myself a despotic environmentalist for political identification, but the Chinese actually did it, and it may represent our only practical hope: fundamentally enabling the sea change in LCOE cost of solar/wind and the viability of EVs in worldwide consumer transport.
If the chinese companies do really get 230-260 wh/kg LFP chemistry scaled, and 150-200 wh/kg sodium ion batteries, then the path to worldwide EV transport for almost everything except air that doesn't need cobalt / nickel becomes fairly clear.
> I always joked that Republican presidencies would induce recessions that were far more of a positive environmental effect at the macro level than Democratic false advocacy. Nobody in the liberal circles every found that funny.
Funny joke. But it rings kind of hollow. Those recessions do little for long term environmental improvement because they channel investment toward the cheapest price (at the time) but highest externality sources of energy, like coal. People getting poorer and running their heating less doesn't help get us off fossil fuels.
Arguably the high fuel prices spurred by Arab oil embargo and the now the Ukraine invasion, coupled with higher fuel economy standards, real climate advocacy, and subsidies for renewable generation have had more of a macro effect on reducing emissions than any recessions one might attribute (fairly or not) to Republican presidents.
Russian oil can just be replaced with American or Saudi oil. They produce a lot but I don’t think this helps reduce demand for oil other than high prices making green alternatives relatively cheaper. Higher prices also means that more people invest in oil and gas exploration and drilling.
High prices also lead to more destructive and less understood methods of extraction like hydrofracturing, that uses a shit ton of water and may lead to immediate but long lasting environmental impact.
Thanks for rudely correcting me. It was my understanding that most fracking in the US just doesn't happen or slows down until the barrel reaches a certain price because new wells just don't get drilled.
Every plan for addressing global climate disruption head-on, if implemented, would fuel an economic boom. Just, not for the fossil-fuel incumbents. So, they win, and we don't.
I'm not seeing heated sidewalks in your citation, and part of the large reason for the bill was that he went out of his way to get the energy from renewable sources back in the early 2000s when that came at a premium from grid suppliers. And his energy bill even then was <$2k/month for a hundred year old ten bedroom mansion which is not that nutty.
Look, I try to reduce the amount of energy I use for both environmental reasons as well as to save money. His energy bill amount is not what is staggering, it's his energy usage amount.
>that the gas and electric bills for the former vice president's 20-room home and pool house devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours in 2006, more than 20 times the national average of 10,656 kilowatt-hours.
Also, his pool costs almost the same amount as his house per month.
>During that time, Nashville Gas Company billed the family an average of $536 a month for the main house and $544 for the pool house in 2006, and $640 for the main house and $525 for the pool house in 2005.
> His energy bill amount is not what is staggering, it's his energy usage amount.
I mean, he was overpaying versus standard energy costs by insisting on renewable sources, so the usage can't be staggering and the bill not be.
And your citation show that he's actively taking steps to reduce his energy usage year over year. $640 in 2005 versus $536 in 2006 means he had a >15% year over year reduction in his house's energy bill for a hundred year old house. He's obviously either cutting back actively on energy usage from simply using less, or making investments in his hundred year old house's energy efficiency or (probably) both. Just because he hadn't gotten to the pool yet isn't that big of a deal to me (particularly when he's going out of his way to power that pool usage out of renewable sources).
Sorry, I didn't copy everything but the pool is heated via gas.
>Nashville Electric Services records show the Gores in 2006 averaged a monthly electricity bill of $1,359 for using 18,414 kilowatt-hours, and $1,461 per month for using 16,200 kilowatt-hours in 2005.
>Nashville Gas Company billed the family an average of $536 a month for the main house and $544 for the pool house in 2006, and $640 for the main house and $525 for the pool house in 2005.
I am not aware of a renewable gas service but they might exist.
Pulling out his power usage from the electrical breakdown, we can see that he is still using 16,200kwh of power ~1.5 times the national average.
I don't care how much he is paying for is energy, I care that he is using energy in a wasteful manner(especially while telling others not to do the same). By excusing him by saying that he because he pays more that it is acceptable is the same as claiming that it is ok for someone pour bio-oil out because it was made using a green process.
One of the main reasons that Martin Luther broke away from the Catholic Church was because they sold indulgences. Meaning, if you were rich and you sinned, you could pay to be forgiven. That is a shitty philosophy, no matter if you view it from a religious, legal or environmental perspective.
It kind of does? I mean, you don't have to be uncomfortable, you can like Bush buy an expensive heat pump to efficiently keep your home warm in winter and cool in summer...but it's more than a bit hypocritical to push the average homeowner with his 3-bedroom ranch to install extra insulation, turn the heat down, and install LED bulbs when your heated pool uses more energy per month than their home uses in a year.
This article puts “roof repairs” in quotes to suggest that was an excuse, but it sounds like that actually happened from what I can tell. I think this answer on Quora provides a more reasonable explanation about why they were removed:
At the time they were not very effective at all and super costly to operate. They were intended more as a public relations promotion than anything else.
I think it is important to remember that anti-renewables messaging has been around for a very long time. The panels might have needed to come off for repairs but definitely could have been put back up. Casually discarding even a public relations action like this likely had negative impacts on the discussion and many people taking the issue seriously for years to come. I don't know specifically how anti-renewables Regan was personally, but he definitely was the leader of a party that most strongly fought climate change messaging and actions in recent years.
Admittedly this hasn't necessarily been as strongly polarizing as it was during the 2010s, there was a time that it was a bipartisan issue that unified both parties in the interest of reducing foreign energy dependence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzDjjUAt3zc
I remember my dad talking, in the 90s, about how silly the solar panels were and how good it was that Reagan took them off. It's how I became aware of that having happened, in the first place, in fact.
Whatever the intent behind removing them, by the time it filtered through pop culture and the media, the message was "Reagan thinks the solar panels were dumb and wasteful and you should too".
Right. Very valid point. It’s entirely possible removing them was partially politically motivated or perhaps more accurately, it was politically motivated to LEAVE them off after the work was complete.
It has traditionally not been in the best interests of many politicians (in both parties) to promote renewable energy over fossil fuels sadly.
It may have changed since then, but even the “Green New Deal” originally did not include cutting tax subsidies for fossil fuels as part of its terms.
I think we're seeing pretty clear evidence of it right now. Americans in sprawling cities that get used to low gas prices buy giant gas guzzling cars and then freak out like none other when prices go up. The subsidies are almost certainly helping to line some investor and executive pockets, but they probably also have some effect driving down prices.
Here is a question I have: if we had basic science pushing battery and solar and wind tech in the 1960s, how far would we have gone in effective alt energy on the grid that far back? Wind certainly would have been effective, it's just electric motors and windmills.
But how much of 1960s tech would have enabled LFP/Lithium Ion densities and the various solar cell efficiencies? I get that silicon cells are reliant on fab technology, but perovskites and others?
We would likely have gotten a lot farther, a lot sooner. It's not so much that the tech was advanced back then or directly transferable to what we have today, it wasn't and isn't. But we spent decades with individuals and small companies basically operating in the wilderness due to lack of funding and demand to advance the state of the art faster. Had the funding existed back then it's entirely possible that there would have been developments in directions (out of necessity) that no one is even thinking about today.
Solar panels have had customers with deep pockets and need for good performance for space applications since the beginning. Of course, the deep pockets and low volumes meant that they wouldn't be optimized for cost.
Sure, but the orders of magnitude of investment and resulting rate of progress aren't comparable.[1] Understanding the world/existence can't compete with cat pictures and blowing stuff up in video games. The consumer market makes government spending look feeble and comical in comparison. While the industry has been more or less bounded by metrics like Moore's Law over the decades, exploding volumes dramatically altered the price/performance delivered.
[1] I'm only talking about the raw price/performance of the capabilities delivered and not the societal value of the respective results.
The improvement in Watts/$ between 1979 and 2022 must be staggering. Still, I think it was a good gesture to install those panels at the White House back then.
I bought a 30-year old house that had hydronic panels/tanks installed around the same time as Carter's. I replaced them with photovoltaics in 2003 and did not notice any change at all in my gas bill (used for water/house heating). So the design was not efficient at all, but it did qualify for the tax incentive, which is why everybody was installing them then.
I removed the photovoltaics after a little over 10 years for the same reason that Reagan did, roof repairs. I did not re-install them.
That's only true if the site is well suited for it. It seems very possible that after running the system for 10 years they found it it wasn't worth the cost/effort reinstallation and maintenance work for what they'd get out of it, even long term.
I can recall our neighbors house in the 90s having a solar hot water heater on the roof that was installed sometime in the early 80s most likely to take advantage of the tax incentives before they went away. By the late 90s they had disconnected it because it was leaking. Whenever I'd see it on their roof I'd be reminded that at one point (in the Carter Administration) we had much better policy towards alternative energy then we had had since. A few years later probably around 2000 they had the unit completely removed since it wasn't doing anything anyway. It took until the Obama admin for most of those incentives to come back.
The house I bought had solar thermal panels (from 1975!) to heat pool water. I took them off last year and put photovoltaic panels up instead. That ~zeroed my electric bill and I'm starting to electrify to make use of the low-cost energy. First up is my gas pool heater.
I’m not sure I would agree that we had a better policy towards alternative energy since policy at that time set nuclear energy back decades.
And on a side note, I’m not sure why we keep coming back around to low density energy sources like solar? I get that modern day photovoltaics are pretty amazing, and can work for very wealthy people who own detached homes. But they are bounded by the laws of physics and this was well known even in Jimmy Carter’s time.
We can’t power cities full of apartment buildings with millions people who want modern technology and a modern standard of living. Not without covering the Earth in silicon. And that is the most environmentally destructive idea I’ve ever heard of.
Did we read the same article? Yes it's on the blog of a company that sells solar panel solutions, but in Reader mode the sales pitch is only in the last paragraph.
We will look back on this moment in American history as a tipping point. I’ve said this before, but these solar panels are a blazing metaphor in the story of climate change.
A little heavy handed? Possibly, but I very much believe the election of 1980 was the deciding factor in climate change. Jimmy Carter told people to turn down their thermostats and aimed to wean America off of foreign energy. In the fall of 1979, there was still a possibility of a future of renewable energy independence. By January of 1980, that light began to dim. Reagan, dear friend to industry, ruthlessly pursued deregulation across the board and doubled down on petroleum, coal, and gas. By the end of the Reagan Bush era, any chance we had to start the slow painful transition away from fossil fuels was long gone.
There is another reason why this election from 40 years ago meant so much. 1981 was when the first research was released by NASA scientists (James Hansen, et al) showing causation between CO2 release and warming in the upper atmosphere. [0] It’s laughable to imagine this paper hitting Reagan’s desk. Rather than forming energy policy, research like this was buried. Moreover, the cover the Reagan administration provided the coal and gas industry gave them the time they needed to form a robust disinformation campaign. Plastics recycling? SUVS in every garage?
In January of 1980 we were already headed towards 4C of warming by 2100. We just wouldn’t realize it for another 30 years.
This bit from the article, "In 2003, Bush quietly installed a 9 kW solar system on the grounds maintenance building. He also installed two solar thermal systems to supply electricity to the White House, one to heat the spa and one to heat the pool." makes no sense.
It is possible to construct from the pieces something that would make sense, but there is no reason to think it would be correct.
https://www.geothermalgenius.org/blog/george-bush-goes-green...
https://www.netafimusa.com/492d96/contentassets/e04072012ace...