To understand Trump and Biden, look to Reagan and Carter

As Donald Trump prepares to reverse Joe Biden's climate initiatives, a historical parallel emerges with Ronald Reagan's undoing of Jimmy Carter's environmental policies. Despite setbacks, Carter's advances in clean energy and the EPA have lasting impacts, underlining their importance in the ongoing transition to renewable power and environmental preservation.

When Donald Trump takes back the White House this month, he is expected to roll back many of President Joe Biden's climate policies, canceling incentives for clean energy, promoting fossil fuel production and drilling, and undoing pollution controls.

ET Year-end Special Reads Buying a home in 2025? Here's how property market can shape up 18 top stock picks for 2025 from 6 leading brokers Five big bangs that shook the corporate world in 2024 It won't be the first time a Republican president has undone the environmental legacy of his Democratic predecessor.

Forty-four years ago, a strikingly similar story played out when Ronald Reagan replaced Jimmy Carter as commander in chief.

Carter, who died this week at 100, was the first American president to grasp the seriousness of the climate crisis and try to do something about it. He promoted renewable energy, worked to limit pollution and understood the long-term threat posed by global warming.

Reagan pushed the country in precisely the opposite direction.

To get a sense of how the next four years might play out, it's worth looking back on Carter's environmental legacy, and what survived Reagan's deregulatory efforts.

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While the panels were crude and inefficient by today's standards, and powerful enough only to run a water heater, Carter saw what was coming.

"In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy," he said at the installation ceremony.

Carter also set an ambitious goal that by 2000, the United States would derive 20% of its energy from renewable sources of power.

Reagan had the solar panels removed in 1986, and did nothing to support the growth of renewable power in the U.S. Instead, he went all-in on fossil fuels.

The federal research budget for clean energy programs at the Department of Energy was slashed.

A tax break for wind installations was eliminated.

And Reagan rolled back fuel-economy standards, paving the way for an era of gas-guzzling cars and trucks.

Regulation Carter signed more than a dozen major pieces of environmental legislation during his single term in office.

The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 sought to minimize the environmental impacts of coal mining.

The National Energy Act of 1978 included the country's first incentives for clean energy and measures to promote energy conservation.

The Energy Security Act of 1980 went even further to promote alternative fuel sources, including solar energy and biomass.

And the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, better known as Superfund, created a program to clean up hazardous waste sites and hold those responsible accountable for environmental damage.

Reagan worked to undo many of Carter's legislative accomplishments.

He slashed support for renewable energy, relaxed regulations for the coal mining industry and was accused of mismanaging the Superfund program.

(The program's director was jailed for lying to Congress.

) The EPA It was President Richard Nixon who created the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.

But it was Carter who began to flex the agency's muscles.

Reagan's first budget proposal included a 25% cut in funding for the EPA. In the first years of his presidency, the agency's enforcement actions plummeted.

Anne Gorsuch, who led the EPA under Reagan, pushed to weaken the Clean Air Act with proposals to loosen pollution standards for automakers and factories.

And Reagan tried to stop the implementation of stronger controls for pollutants in waterways.

In 1987, he vetoed a reauthorization of a strengthened Clean Water Act, but Congress overrode his veto, and the law passed.

Public lands Carter took several steps to protect American wilderness.

The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 protected more than 100 million acres in Alaska.

And with the National Antiquities Act, Carter created several new national monuments, including the Grand Canyon National Monument in Arizona.

But Reagan viewed public lands as something to be exploited, not protected.

His administration opened up federal wilderness to logging, drilling and mining.

He cut funding for the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management.

And he tried to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling, a battle that is still playing out today.

What's next Reagan wasn't able to entirely cancel out Carter's environmental legacy.

Today, the United States derives roughly 20% of its electricity needs from renewable sources.

(Though it took more than a decade longer to achieve than Carter hoped.

) The EPA is arguably stronger than ever.

And numerous government programs support renewable power.

Carter was "far ahead of his time," said Lindsay Chervinsky, executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library.

"His contemporaries might have mocked him," she said, "but today we remember Carter as a president that laid the foundation for 21st-century environmental policy.

" Biden passed two major laws that promoted clean energy, strengthened pollution controls and protected public lands.

And while Trump is likely to reverse many of these policies, important parts of this administration's environmental agenda are likely to survive.

The planet is warming, the consequences are becoming painfully clear and, as Carter predicted, the world is moving toward a future powered by clean energy.

That future may be delayed, but history suggests it won't be stopped.

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