Most everybody slams Jimmy Carter for one thing or another. A letter writer in a recent New Yorker points out some things the former president got right:

“To reduce our dependence on imported oil, in 1977 a national goal was set (with bipartisan support) to derive twenty percent of our energy from renewable sources and conservation by the year 2000. Toward that end, the Solar Energy Research Institute was established, in Colorado, along with four regional centers to help foster the commercialization and adoption of alternative energy technologies and practices.

When Ronald Reagan took office, he slashed the institute’s budget, ordered the four centers shut down (on Christmas Eve), allowed tax incentives for renewables to lapse, and, for good measure, removed the solar panels that Carter had installed on the roof of the White House.”

Here we are, a quarter century later, says the writer, more dependent than ever on foreign oil and barely at square one in dealing with the problem.